


Light My Wounds With Kerosene

by Ancrath



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Drinking, Drugs, Explicit Language, Horror, Hurt/Comfort, Keith is still rejecting the black lion but this time he named her Mittens, M/M, Nonbinary Pidge | Katie Holt, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Punk Shiro, SHIRO LOVES KEITH, lots of bonding moments, punk keith
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-21
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-02-05 04:21:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 35,747
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12786852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ancrath/pseuds/Ancrath
Summary: My earliest memory of fire is of how much it burns.Keith has never known anything but anger and death, until Shiro knocks on his door.





	1. Chapter 1

PART ONE

 

 

My earliest memory of fire is not a friendly campfire, surrounded by family and friends roasting marshmallows and sharing stories. It is not beside crackling logs in a cozy house on a chilly December evening. It is not a match shredding across sandpaper to light the candles of a birthday cake.

My earliest memory of fire is of how much it burns. How it ate at my arm, twisting my skin and ripping it to shreds until the remains crumbled like ash. Of the heat against my face that sucked away my breath.

So I live where the winters are cold, where fires can’t light. I can’t say I enjoy the chill. I want to be outside, I want fresh air, I want silence, but I want safety. The heater in this quiet emptiness I call my apartment is a sorry excuse for a furnace and groans every time it kicks in. I have to wear layers in my own home, but the stupid black cat with annoying white feet has no problem keeping herself warm on days like this. She’s taunting me, now, staring at me from the window sill with her golden eyes, the white mark on her chest sparkling in the dim, rare sunshine.

‘Look at me, Keith. Look at my big, fluffy, Norwegian coat. Look how happy and warm I am. You feed me like a slave and all I do is sleep my days away and push you around. I’m so lucky that I’d probably still be warm and cozy if you dropped me in a frozen lake. I’m utterly useless, but you keep me anyway.’

I named her Mittens.

She sticks around because no one else does. She doesn’t like my arm. She’ll sniff the tech mesh stitching my skin and muscles together and act offended, as if the wires shocked her. Maybe they did.

The ring of my phone pierces my ears, ripping my eyes away from that damned cat. I look at the name on the screen, blankly, with no real desire to actually pick it up. Business call.

“Dreamcatcher,” I answer.

_Supervision. Nineteen-hundred. Port Two._

The sun is almost dead. I have maybe an hour and a half. I slip on my gloves, throw on my jacket, grab my keys, and threaten my cat in case she gets into the only food I have left. You have your own, Mittens. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.

I load six bullets into my pistol, tuck the weapon into the back of my jeans, load a second magazine to hide away in one of my jacket pockets, strap on my knife, and then I’m locking the door behind me.

None of my neighbors ever really see me. I jog down the stairs, passing people who don’t even look up at the sound of my footsteps. I once had an elderly friend who would jest about my black hair and blacker wardrobe. Her husband passed away years before I came across her, but she was such a kind and whole-hearted woman that I had a hard time believing she was lonely. She didn’t think anyone else could see me because she thought I was an actual, living demon. But she befriended me anyway.

She always gave me these looks that seemed to have a purpose of disappointment but her eyes were too bright and loving to actually pull it off. I’ve seen those old eyes fill with rage, though. Burning like the fire that once ate at my arm. I messed up on a job near the grocery store she frequented and she beat my attacker with a shovel while I lay bleeding out in the snow. Where she got the shovel? She probably carries one in her purse. I cussed her out for saving my life and bit her hand when she spoon-fed me. I was nineteen.

I came back every week for the rest of her life to pester her. It sounds valiant, but she died before I turned twenty-one. I watched her age and wilt away as my appearance barely changed. Like porcelain, is one way she described me. I felt guilty, kind of, in her last days, because I thought every time she looked at me she saw something she no longer was – a fair face that didn’t yet know the wrinkles of age, a body that would dodge and sprint. But that wasn’t it. No, she didn’t envy me at all. Every time she saw my arm and the gun at my waist she hid her sadness.

She tried to teach me how to love, but now I’m just more bitter.

Outside my apartment building, I breathe in the harshly brisk air. Nobody talks to me if I don’t look at them. I shove my sleeve back as minimally as possible and read the hands of my watch. I happen to look up as a man is walking by. He’s bigger than me. Taller. But he’s cheerful. He looks cozy in his scarf and his beanie almost completely covers his hair. I can barely see the sides of his head but maybe his hair is buzzed. I make the mistake of looking too long, and he starts to smile. A silhouette of breath escapes him, floating into the air. As the stranger opens his mouth to greet me, I frown and walk the other way.

The parking structure below the building is even colder than outside. I take in the warmth of my helmet as I slide it on, then I’m starting my bike and revving the engine.

I arrive at the dock early, lean against my motorcycle and fiddle with my knife.

“It glows. Is that some kind of demon magic?”

At some point I had stopped telling the old lady that I wasn’t a real demon, but she had asked this only within a few days of me knowing her. I had told her to go away, even though I was eating a tuna sandwich in her house at that moment.

I had expected her to start criticizing me about carelessly playing with weapons. I didn’t care one bit and my face went sour. But she didn’t. Maybe she saw my expression or just had a sense that old ladies can have, because she sat down next to me and sighed.

She said it was definitely a different-looking knife. How observant. But she admired its “intricacy” and “ethereal beauty,” and asked me where I had gotten it. I didn’t tell her. In fact, I left without a word right after she finished the question.

However, I went back later that day, and she greeted me like she would every time I saw her. Welcomingly, offering if I wanted something to drink. I didn’t even answer her. I just immediately explained, in short, that I’ve had it all my life, that it must have belonged to my parents, that it wasn’t really worth anything anyway.

She was quiet. “You don’t have a family, do you?”

“No.”

I check my watch again and my eyes follow the second-hand as it reaches the Roman numeral at the top of the face. Seven o’clock.

It’s just supervision. It’s easy. Sometimes things go wrong, sometimes they don’t. I am the cavalry.

One of the dealers reaches out to shake hands with me. My eyes scan him and my arms remain crossed over my chest. My helmet is still on, the tinted visor hiding my face. I don’t really want to be seen, but it’s more that I’m just cold.

They go about their business. I’m handed a backpack, which I open to find that it’s filled with my sum. Everyone is tense, but it’s almost over. Then I can go home, eat my microwave meal, and pretend to sleep.

I’m watching the bartering groups. There are a few guys talking face to face, but now I realize they’re arguing. Both sides have buddies behind them, but one side is shifting more than the other, and I don’t like that. I nonchalantly move my gun into my hand, finger visibly off the trigger, and begin to approach an especially fidgety man.

I can see fear. I can create it.

It drains me, but it’s harmful, and that’s why I take people’s lives for a living.

“What are you doin’, buddy?” I ask as I walk up. The man flinches at my sudden presence, and the ones talking at the front are now silent. “You’re awful restless. This is over. Everyone go home.”

I guess I called their bluff, because I hear the screeching of tires and suddenly I’m blinded by two pairs of headlights. The cars charge faster and the lampposts scattered around the vicinity flicker in and out. God damn it, I hate it when people bring magic into these things.

Stepping into their path, I face the oncoming vehicles and shoot at the windshields. One vehicle goes swerving away, but I must have missed the driver of the other.

I pull a nightmare from whoever is behind the wheel. He’s similar to many; he dreads dying in a crash. I stand still, building an illusive wave of matter between me and the car. It takes the vehicle head on, denting into the asphalt as if a giant’s bowling ball was dropped from one of the skyscrapers above. The hind wheels fling the car off the ground, but I freeze the cab midair before it can flip onto me. When I drop it back down to the street, the remains of the windows shatter loudly.

There’s gunshots behind me, but that’s not my priority anymore. I know I’m brash and impulsive but I don’t care.

Someone gets out of the car and stares at me in a way that gets under my skin. He’s enveloped in quintessence. I don’t wait for him to come to me. My strides are long and meaningful as I approach him, tucking my gun away. Too many bullet shells makes it too easy for people to track me. My knife glows in my hand.

My target has a bayard, which almost surprises me. He slashes at me and I block his blow. I haven’t been able to catch a nightmare from him yet and I’m still struggling to do so. I stall my time by punching him in the nose, making him stagger back and give me space.

But I still can’t grasp anything. It’s not the case that there’s something there that just isn’t enough for me to use. It’s that there’s _nothing_ there. It doesn’t take me long to put pieces together and realize the man is an insomniac and there’s no dreams trapped in his mind.

What I don’t expect is for him to pull one from _me_.

I’ve met one other Night Mare in my life, but they merely exchanged a few glances with me and quickly disappeared, too wary for any other confrontation. It was in a subway station and I didn’t think they were real at first. There are other people with magic, with powers, with alien skills that are often shared or at least similar to others. I thought I was the only one of myself that I would ever know.

My mistake hits me with enough force to knock the breath out of my lungs. He goes right for the heart, clawing into visions I’ve tried so hard to get out of my head. I feel the fire on my arm again. I hear memories of screaming, of old magic, of loss of control.

I try to fight by forcing the tightness of sleep paralysis around the attacker’s neck and chest. It weakens him just enough that I can get up and move my lead-filled legs. I push him back again with the tightening sensation, but, before my third blow, he leaps for me, bayard flailing. He is a huge creature. His eyes are manic.

My foot lands squarely in his stomach. I can still feel him clawing at my dreams, choking them from me, as I kick him farther back and raise my gun.

His claws sink deeper and I begin to crumble again. This is what I do to people. I rip pain from their minds and recreate their nightmares, vivid and tangible, before their eyes. Nightmares so horrible that my victims are left screaming through the tears ripping down their eyes. Nightmares that can relive terrifying moments locked away in their memory. I can make them see me as a monster, or as a fond dream that twists and tortures them. And I’m not supposed to let them get away alive.

But these aren’t my threads pulling at puppets, controlled by my fingers. I don’t have any control. I’m the puppet, I’m the victim, and I’m dying.

I fire my gun twice and run.

I crash into something. It’s my motorcycle. There’s less gunfire and more bodies. I’m getting out of here I’m getting out of here I’m _getting out of here_.

I don’t remember driving. At some point my hands had enough thought to take off my helmet. I fall, hard, on the tile floor of my building’s lobby restroom. The place is empty and the white walls close in on me fast, closing and closing and closing and closing

until they’re not.

My scarred skin squeezes my right forearm and the wiring of the mesh burns me from the inside out. I smell smoke and flesh burning. My eyes shut as tightly as they can but now I see wreckage, havoc. I see _fire._

I see someone ignited in flames.

He’s screaming at me and I don’t know what he’s saying but he’s _screeching_ in agony and horror because that wasn’t supposed to happen, he wasn’t supposed to be scorched to a crisp by the very element he was entwined with, the element he was supposed to _control_ , and when I finally get my legs underneath me, to propel me forward however weakly they can, I end up at the sink, staring into the mirror, into frightened, livid, terrified eyes that I realize are my own.

I shove the door away and stumble towards the stairwell. My hand shakes against my keys in my coat pocket, the cold metal biting my fingers. My legs just grow heavier as I climb the stairs and eventually my knees begin to tremble to a point where I doubt they’ll hold me up. I reach my front door holding my breath, my heart pounding and my entire being weighed down, trying to drag me to the floor. My hands tremble as I fiddle the key into the lock, my fingers shouting Let go! Let go! and my brain only just keeping what’s left of their grasp around its own sanity.

When I finally enter my apartment, I close the door behind me without turning around or looking back. I take a step and fall to my knees instead.

And I cry.

The monolith on my shoulders pushes me into the floor. My legs are liquid tar, melting and hardening against the carpet, and my limbs _hurt_. My hands grip and pull at my hair, my keys abandoned on the floor. I can’t breathe but I keep crying. Screaming. I rip at my throat, my shirt, my chest, but I don’t have the strength to do much damage. Just a few light marks are all I can leave on the skin that’s suffocating me. I can’t breathe air because I’ve fallen overboard and the water is too cold, too tight, too stiff to let me swim, and I’m drowning. My body wracks with sobs that I can’t control. The voice that howls from my mouth is hardly recognizable.

I knead at the carpet and pull threads away with my white knuckles. I can hardly see through the wetness in my eyes, but I glimpse the shards of my tears hit my hands and the clear pool that soaks my carpet. My body falls forward and I bury my face in the damp fabric below me. I scream into the carpet, the sound muffled to the world but roaring in my ears. I’m holding the threads so tightly that I feel blood on my palms and numbness in my bones.

But then something delicate tickles my hands. I can’t stop crying, can’t stop screaming, but softness gently pushes at my cheekbone. I turn my face to the side and Mittens licks my nose. I cry loudly into her face, but she nudges her nose between my head and the floor, pushing me up so I don’t crush her.

I shift, laying on my side, and my hand strokes the back of the cat’s head. She purrs and I sob until my voice is sore.


	2. Chapter 2

Something thudding wakes me, but the morning sun makes it impossible to open my eyes. I roll onto my side and realize I’m still on the floor, albeit in a different place than I last remember. I’m closer to the window now and I barely glimpse Mittens guarding the sill. Everything is too damn bright.

There’s an empty Stella bottle barely more than an arm’s length away from me. I sit up and dig my knuckles into my eye sockets. It feels good. When I can see again, I’m suddenly aware I don’t have a shirt on, just some black joggers. It’s freezing.

Someone knocks on the door. Again, I guess. Steady knocking, but gentle, as if they have any idea how delirious I am.

“Coming,” I answer deeply, my voice weak and crackly. It takes a moment to get my legs underneath me. Everything is coming back so slowly. I can’t even think. I don’t think I want to.

I pass the kitchen and notice two more empty bottles on the counter. I sigh, rubbing my head, hoping I didn’t make a mess whenever this happened. When I’m finally able to open the door, I lean my scarred arm against the frame and let my head fall into the angle of my elbow.

He must have said hi or something. He’s smiling at me, but he’s looking at me kind of weirdly, his eyes almost scanning me.

“Good morning,” I say in the same voice I originally answered him with because that’s the only volume I can muster. “What time is it?”

He checks his watch. “Sorry, it’s seven-thirty. I was leaving for work and I think you left your motorcycle out on the curb.” He has a nice voice to go with his smile. Almost makes me fall asleep again.

I close my eyes for a long moment and breathe out. I finally recognize the person in front of me. It’s the same guy who smiled at me yesterday, the guy who passed me in front of the complex.

“Makes sense,” I grumble. “Thank you.”

“You look like you’re freezing, man.” His eyebrows squish together and move up his forehead. He looks genuinely concerned. I remember how much taller he is than me. I’m not _that_ small, but he sure makes me feel like it. And yet, he’s not threatening or imposing. My head hurts. “Do you need a jacket?”

I push myself off the door frame with some effort and I don’t miss his glance down at my right arm. “I’m okay. Thanks again.”

I hear a sympathetic “you’re welcome” as I weakly shove the door.

Glancing at the empty beer bottles again, I run a hand through my hair and look around at nothing. I walk back to the door and open it.

“Hey, wait a sec,” I manage to the man, who’s only moved a few doors down, as if he was hesitant to leave. I go back inside to grab a hoodie and as I pull it on I see the scratches all over my torso. Oh.

My brain remembers my keys and Mittens watches me leave. She’s probably hungry. Or telling me that I forgot shoes. I duck back in one last time and return to the waiting man with something on my feet. He chuckles.

He doesn’t try to talk to me and for that I’m grateful. Everything keeps shifting from too loud to too quiet and I can’t keep up. I keep rubbing my eyes hard enough to put black spots in my vision.

He leads a step in front of me so when I feel like I can finally look up without shutting my eyes I study his back. Yeah, he’s still bigger than me. He isn’t wearing the scarf today, but he has the same beanie.

My past-self didn’t even put the kickstand of my bike out. My poor motorcycle is leaning all the way down against the curb, my helmet resting on the frozen ground. I groan.

The tall guy helps me lift the bike up. My teeth chatter and goosebumps prick the entirety of my skin. I pull the helmet on and climb onto the seat to take it down to the garage where it belongs. As the engine comes to life, it’s one of the things that’s too loud.

“Hey, uh,” the tall guy pauses, “if you ever need anything, I’m the door right across yours.” He holds out his hand.

I stare at it, probably a second too long, before returning the shake. “I appreciate it.”

As I park the motorcycle, the thought that he’ll probably never see me again crosses my mind. That’s how everyone works with me. They keep their distance.

But when I get back to my apartment, I notice for what seems the very first time that there really _is_ a door across from mine.

 

 

 

Apart from a family pack of Tostitos, I’m out of food.

Mittens is eating her freshly-filled bowl of kibble and I’m watching her absentmindedly from the kitchen counter. I’m sitting on it, right next to the sink, halfway through a Stella. I can already kind of feel it on my empty stomach.

It’s almost four. I know you’re not supposed to go grocery shopping when you’re hungry but I don’t really have a choice at this point. I _should_ get real food. I should make a list. There’s probably a good handful of things I could put on that list, like broccoli and potatoes and chicken, but who am I kidding. I’ll get to the store and fill the cart with microwave meals because I have no impulse control. There’s only one person living here; no one’s going to criticize what I eat. All the old woman did was tell me to eat healthier and then continue to let me eat mac ‘n’ cheese all day.

There’s that guy who lives behind the door across from mine.

It’s an intrusive thought, I’m not used to it, but it’s suddenly there. And suddenly I’m not thinking about food. He was nice. He went out of his way to not only tell me that I had abandoned my bike but actually help me get it off the ground. I don’t remember the last time I interacted with someone other than the cashiers at the store and the targets I’m occasionally assigned. At least the jobs pay well. More than enough for me to get real food. Real food I could potentially share with someone for once in my life.

I’m not _craving_ interaction, I don’t care for people or love or affection, I just…. I guess I have some walls up that I want someone to take down.

I slip a piece of paper under his door. ‘My name is Keith.’

A little after four-thirty, I still haven’t put a reasonable amount of layers on – in fact, I haven’t even changed at all since my brief outing this morning – but I’ve put some better shoes on to go to the store. I made a list. Mittens is probably decently proud of me.

Energy has finally returned to my body and it’s easier to open the front door. This time, though, the tall guy is just leaning down to slide a paper at my feet.

We both startle each other and as he straightens himself I have to look up at him. He does that chuckle, that smile again, and scratches the back of his head. He has a chunk of white hair at his forehead. The sides are buzzed and the top is messy from his beanie, which is nowhere in sight, but not nearly as chaotic as the mass of black on my own head. He’s wearing the same thing as this morning. Well, duh, of course he is, because he went to work. So then where’s his beanie?

He stumbles over his words for a moment before opting to unfold the paper and holding it out for me to see. ‘I’m Shiro. Nice to meet you!’

Of course he has neat handwriting.

“Shir…o,” I sound out quietly.

“Keith,” he returns. I haven’t heard my name in a very, very long time.

“I’m, uh, I was just, uh… headed out to get some food,” I stutter. I glance back at my kitchen, uncomfortably. The bag of Tostitos is still sitting there. “I’m kind of… out of food.” I turn my head back to face him. My hand is holding the door as if it’ll fall off the hinges if I let go.

Shiro follows my gaze. “Have you been eating Tostitos all day?” His smile creeps up again.

I squint my eyes at him. “What’s it to you?” I glance down at the crumbled paper in my hand. “I made a list,” I add, angrily.

Suddenly his eyes go really wide. “You have a cat!”

The queen herself weaves, purring, around my legs. I watch as she hesitates only a moment and then creeps up to Shiro, who is now squatting in front of her and reaching out both his arms. She barely touches her nose to his fingertips and I can hear her purr switch from me to him the moment she pushes her head against his hand.

“What’s her name? Or his name?” Shiro asks, peeking up at me. I stare back, astonished, my brow knitting. Mittens just purrs and purrs, running her whole body along his hand and loving every moment. Shiro talks to her with a sweet voice and she occasionally makes little sounds back at him.

“Mittens,” I mumble.

Shiro laughs lightly as he glances up at me again. I just stare, my hand still holding the door and my feet glued into the carpet.

“She doesn’t normally, uh, like other people,” I try to explain, but my voice comes out monotone.

“Well, it is a _pleasure_ to meet you, Mittens,” Shiro grins. He continues to pet her as he focuses his attention to me. “I don’t mean to stop you from getting groceries, but if you’d like I can make some dinner for the both of us? I mean, I’ve got plenty to spare.” He jerks his thumb towards his slightly open door and my eyes slowly follow the gesture. “It’s totally okay if you don’t want to.” I look back at him. “Just an offer.” He smiles. He has _got_ to stop smiling. It’s gonna bug me.

“You smile enough for the two of us,” I say.

“So is that a yes?” Mittens has moved on, returning to her spot at the window.

I fidget. “Sure.”

The first thing I’m welcomed with is just how _warm_ his apartment is. It’s not suffocating, it’s… perfectly comfortable. The heat is like a trance and before I know it my hands are moving to take my hoodie off. I don’t have a shirt on underneath.

“Uh, hold on, I need to grab a shirt.”

I exchange the hoodie for a lightweight long sleeve and roll it up to my elbows as I walk back in. I locked my door. Everything is fine.

“So, what do you feel like eating?” Shiro asks, his face stuffed into the fridge.

My first instinct is to ask, “There are _options_?” but my brain at least has the decency to not make my surprise so obvious. “Um, I’ll eat pretty much anything. Make whatever you want.”

He straightens and comes back with a glass of water. He’s ditched his jacket and just has a black t-shirt. He hands the glass to me and I see his prosthetic arm.

I freeze halfway into reaching for the glass. His entire arm is metal. Or, something like metal. It’s clean. It’s, well, I can almost even see my reflection in it, but it’s smooth. It has no jagged edges, no visible wires. It’s neat, sleek, friendly. It’s so, so friendly.

I retract my hand and wrap my left arm around my scars, pulling the sleeve down harshly. Mine are gruesome. They’re mean. They don’t want you to look at them because if you do they’ll bite. They’re a stark contrast to the elegance of Shiro’s prosthetic.

Finally, I look back at him. His eyes are glassy.

“Hey, I–”

“I’m sorry, I should….” I take a step back but he doesn’t make a move for me.

“I brought you some water,” he finishes. And just like that, he doesn’t even bring it up. He doesn’t say a single word about it.

Words catch in my throat. I nod and take the glass. He goes back to the kitchen and starts slicing up some lettuce.

“How long have you lived here?” He asks without turning back to me. I can’t see his face but I can hear how joyful he is. How he doesn’t even care about what he just saw. Something in me latches onto that.

“About four years, I think.” I take a sip. Make conversation. “How about you?”

He grabs some tomatoes and cucumbers and starts cutting. “I actually just moved in a couple months ago. Everything is pretty new to me, here.”

“Where did you move from?”

“California. I was an instructor at a recruitment base. Now they’ve moved me out here to the Garrison.”

“The Galaxy Garrison?” Normal people sit, right? The sofa looks really comfy.

“Yeah, actually.” He looks at me for a second. “You know it?”

I take another gulp. “I’m familiar.”

“I wasn’t really expecting it to be so cold here,” he laughs. I can picture his smile pulling up his cheeks.

“Yeah, well,” I set the glass down on the coffee table, “it’s kind of the coldest city in New York. But you seem like you’re okay.” I crack my knuckles to give my hands something to do. I’m really hungry.

“Do you have a dressing preference?” He asks.

I have to think about what he said for a moment. “Uh, I like Italian.”

“Here,” he hands me a bowl of salad. “Hold you over while I cook something.”

I actually almost giggle. “I honestly should have expected a salad.” He raises an eyebrow at me, but he’s smiling. I’m only joking. “You’re tall and muscular. Of course you eat healthy.”

His eyebrow stays up there on his forehead and he lets out a laugh. “I’ll take that as a compliment!”

“Good tomatoes,” I add.

“Thank you. I grow them.” Whatever he’s making now, I can’t see it. “I have a whole vegetable garden, actually. It’s a little small, but it’s happy.”

This guy is really nice. I don’t mind him.

“So you _do_ smile,” he gently points at me.

I immediately frown. “Do not.”

He’s finished whatever he’s preparing and comes to sit down with me. “I’m making zucchini soup. I promise it’s not as gross as it sounds.”

“Sounds healthy.”

“Yep, you got me,” he smirks. He’s brought a bottle of wine.

“Oh, uh…” I start, but I don’t know what to say.

“Do you not drink wine? That’s okay! Can I make something for you?” He gets up and starts heading back to what I can only assume is his liquor cabinet.

“I could down a screwdriver?”

“Coming right up.” He returns with my weapon of choice and as I drink he reaches his hand out to me, palm up. “Let’s see that grocery list.”

I side-eye him, still sipping. “You’re too healthy. You’ll disapprove,” I say once I’ve set the drink down on the table.

Shiro wiggles his fingers. I grumble.

I pull the crumbled paper from my pocket and slap it onto his hand before resting my elbows on my knees. His skin is warm. I wonder if his prosthetic is cold.

The paper crinkles loudly as he unfolds it. He reads the list out loud and I bury my face in my hands.

“Broccoli, potatoes, chicken, rice, green beans, pasta, with red sauce in parentheses….” He fingers the edges of the paper. “You know, this really isn’t that bad.”

“Yeah,” I mumble from behind my hands, “but I would have gotten stuck in the frozen foods section and just gone home with microwave stuff. Plus, I probably would have just fed the chicken to Mittens.”

He laughs. I side-eye him again. I give in to the gravity of the sofa and collapse against the back, letting the air rush out of my lungs.

“So what do _you_ do for a living?” Shiro asks innocently.

I think. “I’m a…” Nothing’s really coming to mind. “Bodyguard.”

Shiro raises his eyebrows again. The animation of those eyebrows is growing on me. “Oh yeah?” he takes a sip of his own glass. “And are you ever gonna tell me what you _actually_ do?”

“Hopefully never.”

“Yeah, I’ve already seen you half naked. I can believe ‘bodyguard’ for a bit.”

“About that….” He’d seen the scratches. He’d seen them even before I did.

“You don’t owe me anything.”

“I’m not crazy, okay?”

I expect a taunt. A sneer, even. Or at least just _some_ disbelief. “I know. It’s okay.”

I want to trust him. I want him to stay in my life.


	3. Chapter 3

Shiro asked me if I wanted to go out on Friday night with him and his friends. I didn’t dwell on it too much and said yeah, sure. It’s Friday night and I just feel bitterly angry at everything for no reason.

Maybe it would be polite to cancel. I get bad moods. My bad moods put me in more bad moods. I snap at little things and one wrong look or word sets my mind off and I can’t do anything about it. That’s probably what makes me angry, that I just can’t do anything to stop it. I don’t cancel because I actually do want to go out, but the voice in the back of my head keeps telling me they’d have more fun without me.

I don’t even remember the last time I went out with people. Dinner with Shiro the other night was really nice but it was spontaneous and casual and just the two of us. He told me there’s a group of them. I’m anxious, but not enough to want to bring my knife. The only reason it’s strapped to the inside of my jacket is because it’s habit for me to never leave home without it.

“You ready?”

I look at Shiro as I close and lock my door. He’s not wearing his beanie again. I wonder if he lost it. I must have a sour expression on my face because he asks me what’s wrong. “Nothing,” I say. “Just… having a day.”

He walks beside me down the hallway. “A day?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, then let’s have a night. A good night.”

“Okay.” My hands are in my coat pockets and I stare at my feet as we walk, but I know Shiro is smiling at me. I don’t think I feel so angry anymore.

Shiro’s friends are waiting outside the apartment complex. It’s gently snowing. They wave to Shiro and I can feel my face flush. Thankfully, my beanie covers my ears so they can’t see how red the tips are. I suddenly have the urge to hide; I overwhelmingly feel like I don’t want to be seen, but then Shiro greets them with his voice and half my concerns melt away at the sound. He’s here, he knows me, he’s trustworthy. I shove my hands deeper into my coat pockets.

I purposely stand almost behind Shiro. I don’t want anyone to reach out to me or hand me anything.

“Guys, this is Keith,” Shiro introduces me. He looks proud. “He’s my neighbor.”

Lance, Pidge, and Hunk. They’re a band of misfits and each one looks more different than the last. Lance is tall and lean. His skin reminds me of caramel chocolate and his beanie is similar to mine – rolled at the base and hugging his head. Brown strands of hair peek out from underneath the rim. He’s wearing a trench coat. Pidge is the smallest. Their glasses make their eyes look huge and their sweatshirt is two sizes too big. Their hat looks the coziest of all of us, the sides coming down over their ears and the tassels at the end look like something my hands would want to fiddle with. Hunk reminds me of a grizzly bear. I think he’s as tall as Shiro and he’s a big guy. He seems like the most excited to meet me and I find myself smiling back at him. He’s beaming and curious.

Their differences pull me in. They look so comfortable with each other that I can’t help but feel drawn to their circle. Hunk and Pidge respect my space.

Lance, however, gets right up in it.

“Hey, wait a second,” he says, squinting his eyes at me. My feet are rooted into the ground next to Shiro. “You’re Mullet!”

I frown at him.

“You used to go to the Garrison!” Lance explains, pointing a finger this time. It doesn’t seem like he’s scrutinizing me but I don’t really know how to react other than mildly offended. “We were in the same class! We were rivals! And you had a mullet! Do you still have a mullet?”

“I went to the Garrison a long time ago,” I respond quietly.

“Yeah, the last time I saw you was probably sophomore year of high school,” he goes on. “Don’t you remember? Lance and Keith, neck and neck?!”

I shake my head.

Pidge shoves him and the motion dissipates some of Lance’s trajectory. “Hey, that’s alright, dude.” His voice is softer. “No one really knew where you went, is all. You just kind of disappeared.”

Shiro looks at me, confusion written across his brow. I just briefly glance up at him before looking back at Lance. “Yeah, uh…” I feel bad for not remembering him. “Sorry, man. High school was a bit of a blur.”

“No kidding,” Pidge chimes in.

“You only graduated barely two years ago!” Lance shoots at them. “How have you already forgotten it?!”

“You forgot the entirety of high school in one night, Lance,” Hunk chides. “Literally, the night you graduated.” Lance mutters a retort that I don’t catch.

“Let’s drink as much as Lance did at Grad Night!”

“No, let’s not,” Shiro splits up the rapidly increasing excitement, but he’s grinning. “Pidge, you’re still not old enough to drink. Not happening.”

“You’re not my dad!” Pidge retorts in a mockingly high-pitched voice. I can’t help but let out a laugh.

“Mullet laughs!” Lance points me out again. “Now we _have_ to drink!”

Shiro slowly guides us in the direction of wherever we’re headed for the night. “ _You_ may have a drink if you feel like taunting Pidge. But _that_ one-” he points at Pidge “-will not have an alcoholic drink in their hand _in public_ for another year and a half.”

“Hear that Pidge?” Hunk cheers. “Shiro condones your underage drinking!”

“ _Not_ in public!” Shiro corrects.

“Damn, so I can’t use my fake I.D. tonight?” Pidge pouts.

“You have a fake I.D.?!”

Pidge laughs as Shiro launches for their wallet, which they’re now waving around. “No, but you thought!”

We end up at a rather nice-looking arcade that immediately swallows Pidge and Lance. They dance around the games like they live here. This is their place, and I wonder, oddly, how it feels to belong somewhere.

“Hey, Keith!” Lance shouts to me from a marksman simulation. “C’mon, I bet you can’t beat my fine ass at this!”

One side of my mouth pulls up. Maybe they do want me here.

I quickly prove, to everyone’s astonishment, that Lance is not the best at the marksman simulation. His jaw drops to the ground when I beat his high score. I feel a little guilty after, so I opt to watch everyone else play instead. I’m not bothered. I kind of like this. A lot.

For someone so little, Pidge dashes tirelessly from game to game. They’re a master of too many to keep track. Lance isn’t far behind. Hunk is unbeatable at a game called Rollerball. Shiro doesn’t exactly rack up tickets, but I’m really happy he’s okay with keeping me company on the sidelines.

They explain that the tickets they win can be exchanged for prizes. Hunk and Pidge are on their second round of clearing out the prize booth and Lance and I are on our second beer each when my phone buzzes. Shiro and Lance notice so I tell them I’ll only be a minute. I duck outside where I can only hear the dull thrum of the music coming from inside the building.

“Dreamcatcher.”

_Twenty-one-hundred. Dutchtown, West Side._

“What’s the job?” I ask, irritated. But the line goes dead.

I let out a breath of air, shoving my phone back into my pocket. I pull my beanie off to run my hand through my hair.

I put the hat back on and take two deep breaths before heading back in.

Lance and Shiro are watching Pidge and Hunk tackle another game. The top of the machine reads “Air Hockey.” I think the scoreboard says Pidge is winning, partially because Hunk is whining about the puck hitting his fingers.

“Hey,” I move between Shiro and Lance. Both of them are taller than me, but Lance not so much.

“Everything okay?” Lance asks.

“Yeah,” I draw out the word. “It was a work call, they’re expecting me in a half hour. I’m sorry.”

“Aw, come on, we’re barely even getting started!” Lance looks much more drunk than I feel, but he also looks genuinely sad at my announcement. “You’ve gotta stay!”

“I’ll come back, I promise. Are you guys going to still be here around nine-thirty?”

Shiro pulls back his sleeve to see his watch. My buzzed vision is just barely slow, but enough for me to notice the effects. “We’ll probably grab some food. Want me to text you wherever we end up?”

“Sure, sounds good. I’ll see you guys later.” I’ll come back.

 

 

 

Dutchtown is not a nice place.

My knife is a steady presence against my side. My hands itch for it, but I don’t want to be seen yet. For now, I’m just a civilian sitting at the bus stop, waiting for something that I don’t know.

The street light makes my eyes feel fuzzy. I should have said no to the assignment, but ‘no’ is never really an option.

This is the only Dutchtown stop, and the memo wasn’t very specific so I’m only running off assumptions. My watch says I have one minute until nine. I hope this is as quick as I promised it would be.

I hear the footsteps of someone trying to be silent. The deep voice behind me that says “Follow me” does not catch me by surprise.

Standing, I follow the man further down the street. His coat whirls as he turns left, taking me down an alleyway. Eventually, the alleyway opens, and I’m led to a storage unit.

The man is very close in front of me and I’m studying the rhythm of his footsteps. When he spins around and aims a punch at my stomach, I have just enough time to dodge.

He pulls out a rod that, when he clicks a button, shifts into a staff. I duck under the first swing as I grip my knife and then get in close where my knife has advantage against the attacker’s weapon. He swings, I slash. We both miss, and he rushes towards me, running his shoulders into my gut and slamming me on my back to the ground.

I see the pistol the man pulls before he thinks I do. He’s pinning my knife hand. The grit bites my skin. I shove my free hand to his throat and use the momentum to push him over so that I’m now on top of him. He grunts as I knock him down and the gun escapes his hand, skittering away. I’m raising my knife when a second person grabs me by the collar, yanking me back.

I’m pulled back and back before I’m thrown to the side. I throw my knife, blindly, and a shout of pain tells me I hit the second man. The first man jumps towards me again, swinging his staff to kill. I lose my balance trying to evade him and stumble back, my tailbone screaming as I hit the ground again. My legs work just in time to get me out of his reach and the staff leaves a dent in the ground where my thighs just were.

The staff channels magic. I don’t think the man does.

He keeps bashing the staff to the ground and I keep barely escaping it. I take a chance on the magic.

I reach up and grab the staff with both hands as he swings down once more. The magic pulses against me, heavy and harsh. I expected it to sting, but it doesn’t.

The man’s face twists in anger and almost fear. I kick my leg up and catch him, hard, with my knee. My blow breaks his grip on the staff and my foot connects with his gut, throwing him backwards. As he falls, I scramble to the other man, who’s unconscious on the ground with my knife in his chest. When my fingers touch the hilt, the knife glows.

I yank it out just as the first man collides with me. We take each other down, but he’s determined to get to his gun. He falls again as I wrap my arms around his legs, digging my knife into his calf. He shrieks and I get to the gun first, right at the base of a shipping container.

Just as I’m cocking the gun, he’s on me again, shoving me violently against the side of the giant metal box. I put my hands out, trying to ease the hit against my face, but that puts my gun up next to my ear. He fights for control of my hand and when he gets it he clicks the lever that empties the magazine, the case filled with bullets dropping loudly to the ground. He’s bigger than me and I watch my own hand holding the pistol be forced closer and close to my head. When the barrel almost reaches my cheek, he pulls my trigger finger and I yank my head away as the weapon fires and _fuck-_

The blast is so loud, it fucking _hurts_ , my ears are ringing and my head feels like it’s exploded but I can’t stop, I can’t stop or I’ll die so I fling my ringing head backwards, colliding it so damn painfully with the man’s and he drops the gun and he’s stunned, he’s stunned and I’m way, _way_ too buzzed to keep up with this.

I spin around, once again switching my advantage with our position and now I have him pinned against the container and I’m punching him over and over but his staff has shrunken to the original rod and he drives it down to my thigh. I yell with the hit because, God, this all _hurts_ , and he brings the rod up and it hits my shoulder and then the crook of my neck as I can only think to get away get away get _away_ as the rod shifts back into a staff and I’m _fucked_.

The man gets behind me and the staff is against my throat, pulling me up and I can only move backwards to get away from the pressure. I elbow him, aiming for his groin and maybe I hit it, maybe I missed, but he’s on the ground again and pulling me down with him. We roll and I find the gun so I clash it with his head, once, twice, and then suddenly I’ve found the magazine.

I load the gun, straddle my attacker, and fire three times at the ground just around his head. Everything is suddenly, finally frozen and there’s a snarl on my face.

I’m about ask “What the _fuck?!_ ” but a new voice cuts through the horrible ringing in my ears.

“That’s enough,” it says.

The man below me has his hands up in surrender and every muscle in his body is relaxed. He’s given up. This was staged.

I can’t take my attention off of him because he’ll leap up, he’ll jump at me, he’ll overpower me again but I _know_ he’s defeated, _he_ knows he’s defeated, and I have no idea what is going on but my body is taut and anxious and my brain is fuzzy and-

“I said, that’s _enough_.” Something that feels like magic hits my hand and the gun goes flying. I panic and scramble for my knife. It’s sticking out of the guy’s calf. He cries when I pull it out.

The magic hits me again, but this time it paralyzes me. My arm is outstretched, my knife aiming in anticipation, but I can’t move. The panic fills my throat as if I’m swallowing stitches.

I fight back.

I push my own magic against whatever is restraining me, and when the paralysis doesn’t waver I push harder, _harder_. Freedom rushes through me like a wave.

“So you _do_ still have magic in you,” the voice says, silky and charming. Like a python.

I finally see him as I jump to my feet - I see a man with white hair past his shoulders like liquid silver who’s taller than anyone I know. His face is ageless and his stride is like a stalking cat and he’s barely older than Shiro, _Shiro,_ who’s waiting for me, Shiro is waiting for me to come back, I need to-

“Why didn’t you use your magic from the start, hm?” The tall man says with a voice like liquid. “You’re confident in your fighting abilities, but you’re _sloppy_.” He’s getting too close to me, get _away from me!_ “You’re out of practice.”

My magic pulses and I let it go again. It creates a barrier of force between him and me but he makes it seem as if he stopped on his own, unfazed, and I don’t like it. I don’t like him.

“Stop it,” he says, annoyed. “I’m not going to attack you; you’re of interest to me so long as we can come to terms of agreement.”

My snarl grows.

“I know you’re not careless enough to just throw your magic around, so don’t pretend like you do.”

I don’t let go. My barrier stays strong.

“Let’s discuss, Dreamcatcher. You’re a known and feared assassin. You’ve been wasting the past, what, year? Acting as some kind of bodyguard for whoever pays enough. You’re dangerous, certainly too dangerous for something as simple as supervising drug deals.”

The busted deal. The quintessence. The other Night Mare.

“Here are my terms: you can work for me, and only me, for full pay, of course, or you can decline. Which, then, of course, I _will_ attack you, and I will kill you.”

I finally speak. “Why?”

“To give you a chance to exercise your powers, of course!” The tall man smiles. His teeth are sharp. “You are lethal, and you are a threat to me.”

How much does he actually know about me? Does he know my name?

“You have ticks,” he continues. “You’re panicky and wary. You’re hotheaded. But, in turn, you’re quick. You can think efficiently under high pressure. You trust your instincts and you are strong despite how small you can be.

“My name is Lotor. I run the underground ring you were once a part of.”

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“You were younger when I last saw you. Stubborn and arrogant. I see nothing has changed.”

“That organization cost me my life. It ruined everything I had.”

“Which is why I want you. You have no friends, no family, no future. You have anger and you are a wealthy investment.”

He doesn’t know about Shiro. He doesn’t know. I could walk away and he could come after me, he could kill me, and he’d never know about Shiro. He’d never touch Shiro, he’d never touch Shiro’s friends.

But if I walked away, he would know I had something to lose. He’d know I’m protecting something, someone - someone I barely knew. He’d know.

He’d _know_.

 

 

 

 

 _I’m on my way_.

I stare at the text before sending it. It’s 9:39pm.

The bus from Dutchtown dropped me back at the arcade. The restaurant they picked isn’t a far walk. I click send.

A blonde girl greets me at the door because that's her job and that's what she has to do. She asks me how many I’m here with, but I already see the group at the bar. I tell her I’m with them and she lets me go.

Hunk notices me first as I make my way over, my hands hiding in my jacket. I can feel the bruises on my knuckles.

“Hey, he’s back!”

Shiro turns to welcome me, but his excited smile fades just enough for my ringing head to notice. He says nothing about the dark, blossoming mark at the crook of my neck but his eyes wander, his eyes worry, and I wish, in this very moment, I could drown in them.

Fuck.


	4. Chapter 4

We’ve barely met in the center of the ring when the guy slams his face into my nose.

The circle of people catches me and roughly pushes me right back out into the open. I can feel their hands against my back, brushing my shoulders, and I hate it. By now, all the alarms in my head are shrieking, my defenses up and ready for another blow, but this beast of an opponent is just taking in the limelight. I’m annoyed.

When he finally comes in again, I’m quick to knock him down with one swing, then two swings of my fist. He tries to get up so I give him a third. He stays, motionless.

Blood is pouring from my nose. I wipe my arm across my face and the blood clings to my skin. Lotor is watching me from his throne and my eyes meet with his for a second. I look down and spit more blood onto the dirt.

 

 

 

 

 

I can still feel dried blood in my nose, still taste some of the liquid in my mouth, no matter how hard I tried to drink it down. I washed away the visible blood in the bar’s bathroom but the bruising is going to stay a while.

My eyes are blissfully unfocused as I hit the button for the elevator. For once, it’s not shut down for maintenance. I can’t even remember the last time I used it. My apartment key fiddles in my hand, my thumb running over the jagged edge back and forth, back and forth, all the way up the ride.

I hazily watch the doors slide open on my floor, and as I step forward my fingers get this brilliant idea. “Let go,” they say. I hear my small gasp slowly as I watch my key drop to the metal base of the elevator doors and slide down the never-ending crevice.

The doors close and I stand there in the hallway in silent, half-assed disbelief.

I pull out my phone when I’m almost at my door. Call the front desk, or the landlord, or somebody. My phone screen is black. It stays black when I press the power button.

My head falls forward to lean against my locked door. I groan. My breath smells.

So my legs turn me around and my scarred hand knocks on Shiro’s door.

I hear everything before I see it, but even my hearing is kind of muted and groggy. When I look up, Shiro is looking down at me. He hasn’t said anything and I can’t focus enough to read whatever expression is on his face.

“I dropped my key down the elevator,” I try to explain. “And my phone is dead.”

He’s still just looking at me. Maybe he’s thinking of what to say. My fingers don’t have anything to fidget with. My nose aches.

Shiro pulls out his phone and I think he checks the time.

“Do you want me to call the landlord for you?” he finally asks.

“Please,” I mumble in reply.

“Do you want to come in?”

“Not really.”

His face is soft. He puts his phone up to his ear and I study the floor while I listen to him talk to the landlord. He has fuzzy socks on.

Shiro is silent for a moment after he hangs up the phone, but then he asks, “Do you want me to stay here with you until she gets here?”

“Sure,” I say as I back up to the opposite wall, lean against it, and slide down to the floor. My legs splay out in front of me, too careless to stay out of the walkway. Shiro squats down next to his open door and wraps his arms around his knees. The white tuft of hair at the top of his head is messy.

We sit and we wait.

“Is your nose broken?” Not ‘what happened’ or ‘are you drunk’ or ‘is there anything you want to talk about’ – nothing beyond my boundaries. A question that I can answer.

I go to touch it and immediately regret it the moment I feel pressure. “I guess so.”

“Do you want to come to Lance’s party Saturday night? He asked me to invite you.”

It catches me off guard. It’s such a nice thing to ask and my brain can’t wrap around it right now. I was paid to fight someone. I’m drunk. I have no idea how to explain how deep I am in all this shit.

“Yeah, that would be nice.” Each time I speak, my nose throbs.

Shiro smiles at me, gentle and comforting, like I’ve grown to associate with him. I’m sure he has his worries and his demons, but I haven’t seen them show.

“You have some walls,” he says. It takes a moment for that observation to settle in my head. Yeah, ‘some.’ They’ve grown from plaster, to brick, to concrete. When I push my weight against them, they grow taller, thicker, heavier.

The landlord, or, well, land _lady_ , as I was too unobservant to remember, lectures me to not drop this key as she opens my door. This is the _only spare key_. I nod and grumble, sniffing as I remember not to touch my nose. She turns to Shiro and tells him the same thing, convinced that I didn’t comprehend anything she said, as if Shiro is my big brother. She tells him to look after me, that it’s too early in the evening for me to be drunk. It’s winter; everything is dark by two. Dark means I can drink. I have no idea what time it is. Mittens is yelling at me for food.

The landlady leaves, chatting away. She reminds me of the old lady I used to spend time with, but shorter. More animated.

“Okay, okay, I’ll feed you, I promise.” I stumble into my apartment and Mittens is trying to trip me. Shiro stands behind me, his hands tucked into the pockets of his sweatpants.

“Thanks,” I remind myself to say.

“There’s a door to you, somewhere,” I hear over Mittens’s incessant demands. There’s a worried undertone to the way Shiro looks at me. “I want you to know that I’m ready to be there when you’re comfortable enough to give me the key.”

Blood starts running from my nose again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter. I've been wanting to update this so badly but now that I've sat down and started to write I can't think of anything....
> 
> That being said, I really appreciate everyone's comments, and I'm very open to where you guys want me to take this. Keith is ace in this (because that's how I headcanon him) so no smut. Oh, and the key dropping down the elevator actually happened to me one time. They weren't able to get it out until the next routine check, which they said could be up to six months away. Thankfully, I got a call two weeks later saying they got my keys. Wild.


	5. Chapter 5

Lance is already wasted when he opens the front door. 

"Ayyyy!" he shouts, reaching out to grab Shiro's hand, a glass of... something I don't know in his other. Shiro pulls him in and wraps an arm around the back of Lance's shoulders, grinning. When Lance spins to me, I offer him a fist bump, and he does the explosion thing that I've seen kids do. I smirk, letting my jaw relax and my teeth show. 

"You bett'r keep tha' smile on all night, Mullet," Lance slurs. "No party poopers allowed!"

I raise an eyebrow at him, my smile growing as I walk through the entryway. "Uh huh," I jest, taking the glass from his hand, downing the remainder of the contents. It's sweet. "Don't strain yourself, buddy."

"Hey, Shiro and Keith are here!" Lance has climbed to the top of an armchair and raises an arm to address the room. It's not so much a sea of people, but rather just enough to fill the atmosphere with a positive vibe and not too much that it's overwhelming... yet. Everyone looks like they have something to do, something to say, something to enjoy. I see Pidge on top of Hunk's shoulders, waving enthusiastically back at Lance. They shout something, but I don't hear what they say. 

"Come on!" Lance grabs my elbow halfway down from the chair and pulls me along. Shiro brings up the rear, greeting a few people as we're tugged by. He occasionally does that same thing as he did with Lance, shaking someone's hand and pulling them in for a half hug. It's a welcoming gesture and Shiro is beaming. He's surrounded by friends, some of them so close that they're family. 

Pidge is absolutely guzzling from a champagne glass and I watch them, in almost awe, as they turn their head the other way and drink from a second. I realise, with a chuckle, that they have the glasses duct taped to their hands. When the second is emptied, they curl over and Hunk refills the glasses. He's drinking straight out of the bottle and, yep, it's definitely champagne. Some middle aged, wealthy, white woman is having restless sleep right now with how carelessly Hunk and Pidge are chugging their toxins. 

"Shiro!" I hear a new voice, a girl. Shiro and I turn around and she's dazzling, her eyes are as bright as diamonds, and she's  _completely_ trashed, and oh, god, wait, she's covered in glitter. Bright, sparkling, pink glitter. "Who is  _this?!"_ Her crystal eyes widen impossibly and she looks way too excited to see me. Before I can escape, her glittery hands grab my face and I can't hold back my yelp. 

"Allura, this is Keith!" Shiro has to raise his voice over all the sound. He chuckles, looking a tiny bit embarrassed, and I scrunch my eyebrows and glare at him as Allura and her glitter play with my face. 

"He's  _gruuumpy_ _,"_ Allura tries to mock my expression and suddenly I can't be irritated anymore. "There!" she nearly shrieks. "He's smiling!" Her voice is so cheerful and her accent is calming. 

Lance throws an arm around Allura and looks like he's trying to pull her in for a kiss on the cheek. She fakes disgust and pushes him away, pretending to gag. Hunk offers me his champagne, but when I reach for it, he shakes his finger disapprovingly. He holds the bottle up to my mouth and tips. I easily swallow, what, four sips? And he looks impressed. The next glance he exchanges with Lance makes me immediately regret taking the drink so fluidly. 

"Wait! Hun-" but Lance has grabbed my shoulders, gripping me like stone. I try to get away, but I'm laughing. Hunk grabs my jaw with one hand and brings the glass up. Pidge starts shrieking with delight from above. He doesn't let up until I've finished the bottle, and when he finally pulls away I feel dizzy and have to catch my breath. Giggles bubble up from my throat and I wipe my sleeve across my lips. 

As the alcohol gets passed around, the buzz of the room grows. I'm warm and I'm happier than I've been in a long time. Everyone is so careless and free; there's no cliques here, no outcasts. Everyone has a buddy and their eyes are glazed over with childish joy. Lance shows me to the bar and Pidge and Hunk make their way from room to room, trading bottle after bottle, something different in Pidge's glass every time I run into them. 

I try to stay near Shiro even as I feel more and more intoxicated, the last of my impulse control keeping him within the boundaries of my vision. I stick with Lance, partially because he makes it more comfortable to socialise but mostly because he's conjoined limbs with me and is apparently unable to let go. I'm afraid if I shrug him off he'll fall. The image is too amusing for my own good. 

We're rounding another corner when Allura appears out of what my drunken mind can only fathom as thin air. Like a  _sorceress_. But she's not as graceful when she takes a shot and promptly throws up before it even reaches her stomach. 

Lance screams like a baby and I have to lean against the door frame because my laughter wants to take me off my feet. I'm howling and Lance is just  _wailing_ and I can't even handle this, I'm dying and it feels  _so good_ to let myself go. 

"Okay, just-" I'm having a really hard time composing myself because I have no desire to actually do so. "Just, okay, I'll go get paper towels," I manage to stammer. 

"NO!" Lance screams in my face, his hands like vices on me. "Don't leave me! You can't leave me! I'll die without you!" He's wobbling even with his leverage on me. 

"I'll come back! I promise!" I yell back, my hands squeezing his face. The drinks have dissipated my nerves and human contact feels liberating. Lance looks like he's about to start sobbing as I try to break away from him. "You'll be fine! Just stay here with Allura!"

Lance throws himself onto Allura for stability, which I think is totally not the best idea, but it gives me a chance to escape. I don't really remember where the kitchen is but when I eventually get there, two people are sprinting out. 

Pidge is in the corner, their back to me. I glance around hazily, momentarily forgetting what I came for. 

"Pidge!" I greet excitedly, but the absolutely feral animal that whips around and  _hisses at me_ catches me so off guard that I actually do scream, all high-pitched and everything. They're guarding the toaster and in the next moment the toast pops up and Pidge launches into the air and then we're both shrieking.

"I just came for paper towels!" I yell. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" I hastily grab what I need and sprint out of the kitchen. 

Lance is a blubbering mess in Allura's arms as they lay face-up on the floor. Some people walk around them, others just step right over them. As I leave the roll of paper towels with them and set out in search of Shiro, I can't help but think of how careless I can be here, surrounded by well, friends. Great friends. I have no reason to be tense, no reason to be hyper aware of my surroundings. I've been living the past however many years of my life afraid of danger around every bend but right now, right this very moment, everything is perfect.

Especially Shiro dancing on a table outside. 

I laugh as I'm greeted with this glorious sight. The backyard is littered with dancing bodies and the pool is as crowded as the main room inside. There's colourful lights, loud music, and if they're not singing, they're dancing, drinks held high. And Shiro is right there in the center, alone on top of a table, completely lost in his own world. He's not holding anything, just letting his arms swing and his body sway. His smile suits his face so well and just the picture of it makes my heart bloom. 

"Keith!" He nearly falls off the table in his rush to get down and I grin more. The way he hurries up to me makes me feel loved. 

"Hey!" he shouts, gently grabbing my upper arms. He has to lean down to be face to face with me. 

"Hi!" I shout back, letting my body fall back against the wall, my hands around his elbows. We stay that way for a moment, smiling at each other, the noise thrumming rhythmically around us. All the colours blend together, the lights dancing in and out of my vision. 

"Hey," Shiro says again, but he just breathes it out this time. He's probably more drunk than I am and his eyes are swimming in mine. 

The familiar start of a drumbeat throws me out of my trance. When the guitar strums in, I'm suddenly completely and entirely overwhelmed with energy.

"I know this song!" I'm so, so happy. 

"You  _what?!_ _"_ Lance startles the hell out of me. Where did he come from?! How long had he been there?! "You actually listen to music?!"

I take my chance and sing, no, shout in his face, Shiro still clutching my arms. 

_"Hey girl, you know, you drive me crazy! One look puts the rhythm in my hand! Still I'll never understand why you hang around, I see what's going down!"_

I turn my attention back to Shiro, right in front of me. My eyebrows scrunch in the power of all my emotion and I probably look angry but I'm smiling so wide and Shiro's completely losing it as he starts shouting along with me, each of us up in each other's faces.

_"Cover up with makeup in the mirror, tell yourself it's never gonna happen again! You cry alone and then he swears! He! Loves! You!"_

We've somehow made it up onto the table, the three of us.  _"Do you feel like a man?! When you push her around?! Do you feel better now, as she falls to the ground?!"_ Pidge and Hunk have found us, and Shiro and I lean down to hold their hands as Lance takes in the spotlight. _"Well, I'll tell you, my friend, one day this world's going to end! As your lies crumble down, a new life she has found!"_

 

 

 

 

"Come on! I'll help you up!"

"Why?!"

"Oh, just get up here!" Shiro grabs my hands and hauls me up onto the roof. 

There's a handful of people up here, and, well.... 

One of them is literally about to slide right off the edge. Another guy horrifyingly, but successfully, leaps off the tiles into the pool. I keep a strong hold on Shiro's hand because I may be agile but I'd rather not go tumbling down. 

A third guy is blatantly making out with a piece of pizza. 

"-on your face!" Shiro is saying to me.

"Huh?!"

"You have glitter on your face!" He laughs as he moves to swipe the sparkles off, but I slap his hand and he jumps. 

"It's  _pink!"_ I say defiantly.

A loud crash below us interrupts whatever sound Shiro makes. "Oh, shit," he laughs as he leads the way off the roof.

We make our way inside, where there's noticeably less people than before, and Pidge is at the bottom of the stairs, face down, duct taped to an office chair. Shiro rushes up to them, but as he turns them over, they're laughing their ass off. Allura is at the top of the stairs, rolling on the floor, arms wrapped around her stomach, howling. 

"Shiro! Put me back up at the top!" Pidge demands.

Shiro looks at me incredulously, but I say, "You heard the demon! Pitter patter!"

"Let's get at 'er!" Pidge cheers. 

I help Shiro haul Pidge up the stairs because he's way too drunk to even stay on his own feet anymore. How he pulled me onto the roof is unknown to me. Allura takes the Pidge-chair from us and pushes the maniac across the hall, both of them screeching with joy.

Hunk appears from the first room at the top of the stairs, holding what can only be a kiddie cup. 

"Where'd you get that, Hunk?" I pat his shoulder. He sips from the straw delicately. 

"It's my cup," he explains all child-like. 

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Lance gave it to me. It's my cup."

The devil himself launches out from a few doors down, yelling nonsense at the top of his lungs, a hockey mask over his head and boxing gloves on his hands. Hunk has the quick thought to shove the cup into my chest where I scrabble for purchase, before he, too, starts yelling incoherently as Lance chucks a second set of gloves at him. I take a small sip, minding my own damn business, as they tackle each other. Never do they ever quit yelling. 

By the time Shiro and I make it back up to the roof, a majority of the guests have cleared out and there's no one up here anymore. The air is cold and the pool is empty, but there's still a group hanging out around the campfire, smoking blunts. We settle at the top, sitting close to each other for warmth. For once, I don't mind the cold so much, but that's not to say I don't recognise it's there. 

We relax, watching our breath plume into the night sky. I lean back and lay on the tiles, gazing up at the stars. I can see them better here than in the city. I really can barely see them at all in the city and I hate it. This is where I want to be. Outside, in fresh air, surrounded by nature. And friends. I like having these friends. 

"You always have so many bruises," Shiro surprises me. I didn't even notice him looking back at me - I was too busy picking out relevant stars and planets. 

"Yeah," I respond, at a loss for words. 

"How's your nose?" he asks as he lays back with me, copying the way I've tucked my hands behind my neck. 

"I haven't had a problem with it today," I shrug. "Not the first time it's happened."

"It looks good. Glad it didn't damage that porcelain face of yours."

Porcelain. Like how the old woman had described me.

"Perfect, huh? You're one to talk."

"Didn't take you as one for flirting," Shiro winks. 

"I'm not."

"Ah, sorry, I got the wrong idea." He looks away from me, up at the stars. I've been watching them sparkle this whole time but now I jerk my head in his direction, my mouth gaping and eyes wide in surrender.

"No! No, that's not what I-" but he interrupts me.

"You know the constellations?" Not surprised, just asking if I did.

"Yeah, I like the stars," I sigh. "When I was a kid, I imagined space as, like, the fur of an animal or something. The moon was it's eye, and it was always slowly blinking at me."

I hear the shift of clothes as Shiro breathes out a content smile. "That's very specific."

"I was a wild kid."

"You're a wild person."

I feel the ends of my mouth creep up but I don't exactly smile. Yeah, wild. But I've been caught, trapped, and chained by a white-haired panther. And I don't know how I'm going to break free, or if I ever even will. 

"You're a loud thinker."

"How so?"

"You're very quiet."

"Ironic."

He points upwards. "Orion has always been my favorite. The hunter. Like a warrior of the sky."

"Now you're the one with a wild imagination." I tilt my head around. "Pleiades. That's my favorite." Shiro turns his head to follow my gaze. "I always thought it was just a random cluster of stars. Then someone lent me their glasses and I realised it had a shape. I was mind-blown, honestly. It was also the night I realised I have terrible vision."

Shiro laughs. "You wear glasses?"

I smirk. "Well, I have them, now, but that doesn't necessarily mean I wear them."

He sighs. "Wild. Untamed."

You'd be surprised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One of my best friends helped me come up with the ideas for this chapter since she is a party animal and I have never actually been to any sort of big house party and also since this is my first time ever writing such a scene. If there's anything you guys would like to see the paladins doing/experiencing please feel free to leave some ideas!


	6. Chapter 6

The lights behind my eyelids drift between rainbow and monochrome, nothing taking shape for long as they move across my vision. For a moment, there’s just darkness, and then a familiar streak of white. There’s warmth and something luring me in the gentlest way possible, and when the dream dissipates and my eyes open, slowly, to glittering sunshine and an easy breeze playing with my window curtains, I hold onto the fuzzy feeling of the first dream I’ve had since I can remember.

Mittens is stretched out on top of me, her chin resting on her paws, still asleep. The sheets rest just above my hips and she’s somehow worked her way under my right arm. Her fur looks so soft next to the gritty mesh holding my skin together. I move my fingers to rub her ear and she chirps to life, purring the moment her head pops up. The sun is beaming right down onto her, her coat is warm on my fingertips, and her toes curl into my chest.

She stands and curls her back, stretching her spine up to the ceiling, and demands that I feed her.

“Oh, really?” I reply in the high pitched voice that typically gets a response out of her.

She chirps again, purring endlessly.

I sit up slowly and she jumps off the bed. I shove my fingertips into my eyes and as my hands drop down to my lap I look out the window and sigh. It’s a beautiful day and the sunlight is making the asphalt sparkle. I wish my view was of trees and mountains.

I look down at the ink scattering my body, sporadic and irregular but intensely and thoughtfully placed, and take a moment to remember the designs. The ram head on my left side, the lioness on my good arm, Odin’s ravens battling behind my shoulders, and the three-eyed fox rambling about ancient things. I look, lastly, at the small Marmoran design on my left wrist, and then down at Mittens, who starts yelling.

My limbs don’t fight me this morning to pull themselves out of bed and my vision is quicker to sharpen than usual. I pull on a pair of joggers, pull my hair back and out of my face, and feed the cat.

I don’t own enough things for my apartment to actually get messy, but I do take the effort to throw away the empty bottles and crumpled chip bags. I even vacuum the carpet and clean the mirrors because the simple actions make me feel better.

My hair keeps falling forward so I put the majority of it in a ponytail and clip most of my bangs to the top of my head with a bobby pin. My phone buzzes while I’m washing my face.

‘ _are u doing anything today?’_

Shiro always has weekends off. Lance has been joking that we come as a package whenever Shiro is invited anywhere or makes any plans.

_‘about to go to the gym rn’_

I set my phone down and then pick it right up again. _‘yes u can come’_

_‘:D’_

“You’re actually six years old,” I say when he opens his door.

Shiro hides his giggle with a scoff, and then, “Do you have water?”

I sigh, swinging my backpack onto my shoulder as Shiro closes his door behind him and start moving away. “ _Yes_ , Dad.” I won’t admit to him that since his nagging about keeping myself “hydrated” started I’ve actually been feeling physically better, especially in the mornings.

“I thought I was six,” he winks when he catches up to me.

“A man of many talents.”

 “I can get us both in for free at the Garrison,” Shiro presents the offer as a question, keeping pace with me down the stairs.

“I have a membership at one just down the street,” I explain casually. “It’s within walking distance and I’m allowed to bring a friend for free whenever.”

I don’t miss a glimpse of Shiro smiling.

I’ve never noticed how often I’ve walked this route alone and in silence until just now, realising I have someone to share it with.

“You’ve really settled in here,” Shiro comments.

“What do you mean?”

He holds the strap over his shoulder with one hand, his bag swaying at his side. My arms are crossed across my chest to block the chill despite the sun, my backpack warm against my spine.

“It’s… really different than what I’m used to, here,” he gets out. “You’ve done this all on your own and it seems like there isn’t a corner you’re not familiar with.”

There’s no way I can explain that familiarity to him while still leaving out the whole thing where I can manipulate dreams or shoot people in the face, depending on who’s paying. “I’m not from here, you know, if that makes you feel any better. It just takes time to get comfortable.”

“Really? Where are you from?”

My eyes move away from watching my feet. “I was actually born in South Korea, but only, like, a quarter of my family is Korean. We moved to a town outside Vancouver when I was really young but I’ve been in the states since, well, uh, I was offered a place at the Garrison and I’ve been here from then on. I miss Canada, though. I miss the landscape.”

“The Garrison gave you a scholarship?”

“Kind of. They invited me when I was old enough to attend. So, what, like eighth grade? It doesn’t matter though. I flunked out.”

“No you didn’t.” I whip my head to look at Shiro but he’s just got a soft smile on his face and keeps walking. “Iverson threatens the first years with stories about you. You know, after Lance convinced me that you were the same Keith Kogane that punched the commander’s eye into the back of his skull and had to be forcibly removed from the program, it was still a little hard to believe. Everyone who’s heard about you thinks of this giant, brawny guy, but you’re really kind of small.” I glare at him and he laughs. “You’re small, but…”

Intimidating. Antisocial. Broken.

“You’re not someone to be messed with and you could probably kill someone with a teacup, but you’re also really passionate about things when you’re given a chance. And you’re loyal as hell and there’s a lot things people can admire about you when they look past your temperament.”

I smile. “Riddick.”

He looks at me funny. We’ve reached the gym but he doesn’t realise it.

“Riddick,” I repeat. “He killed a guy with a teacup.”

“Is that all you got out of that?” Shiro laughs outwardly. I love the sound.

I’m about to walk into the gym but Shiro stops in his tracks. When I look back at him, he’s staring up in awe, and when he finally walks in, his jaw drops even more.

“What?” One side of my lips curls up.

“This place puts the Garrison to shame.”

I told you – the jobs pay well.

I sign in and add a +1 next to my name to account for Shiro. He looks like a puppy; not for the first time.

“Six years old,” I murmur.

Shiro throws his hands up, his smile breaking into a breathy laugh.

I pull my sweatshirt off and the air conditioned coolness of the building sends goosebumps across my bare skin, but it’s refreshing. I fish through my backpack for my shirt, a black Fit For A King t-shirt that I’ve cut the sleeves off of. I slide my Under Armour sleeve onto my right arm, grab my earphones, and look forward to start warming up when I glance at Shiro, who’s absentmindedly stretching his legs but really just watching me, and we both flush a little.

“I-I like your hair back,” he stutters. I smirk, shake my head, and roll my shoulders.

We focus on our own work for most of the time, save for trading off equipment and spotting each other from time to time, until I see Shiro mouthing words toward me and I have to pull out both my earphones to hear him.

“What?”

“What are you listening to?” he asks sweetly from the rowing machine.

“Oh, uh,” I toss the earphones around in my hands. “Uh, death metal? I think?”

“No,” Shiro says disbelievingly, a grin pulling across his face.

“What!”

“I just lost a bet to Pidge.”

“No!”

“Yes! They had you figured out, dude. Said you were a metalhead. They were adamant about it.”

“Oh? And what was your guess?”

“Nothing. Who are you listening to?”

“Shiro! What did you think I listened to?”

He’s giggling too much and has to stop rowing. “I don’t know, I… I don’t know! I put money down that you were into 80s rock or something. Like Queen or Journey or something. I’m sorry!”

“You think I’m that out of touch with society?” I laugh. I step over some equipment and make my way towards him. “Here.” I hold out an earbud and turn the volume down a notch.

Shiro makes a slightly contorted face but he doesn’t look entirely shaken. “It’s, it’s, uh….”

“Chaos,” I finish for him.

He listens for a few more seconds before I take the earbud back. “Amulet by Reflections. I listen to them mostly for their sound but their vocalist is pretty talented, too.”

“Do you know A Day To Remember?” he asks and it almost catches me off guard.

“Yeah, why?”

“That’s the heaviest I can do,” he says.

“You’re a pop punk guy?”

“Yeah!” Shiro beams. He looks like he’s never gotten to share his music taste with anyone. “Yeah, I like pop punk.”

“Me too,” I smile, and he moves on to the treadmill while I put my earphones back in.

I’ve never shared music with anyone. I’ve never gone to a concert or anything; too many people. The music I listen to has gotten heavier and heavier as the years have gone on. But Shiro was genuinely interested and he actually… related it to himself? And shared his own interests? And they’re similar to mine? Like, I actually really do like A Day To Remember? And-

Shiro’s watching me again as I’m lifting dumbbells. I can see him in the mirror. He doesn’t recognise that I’ve seen him so I just keep going. But then he catches my line of sight, and he stumbles, and he gets so flustered, and

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry-“

“It’s fine,” I assure him.

“I’m so sorry. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, I’m sorry!”

“Shiro, it’s okay,” I put the dumbbells down and try to think of a topic to help him out. “I like your gauges. Do you have anything else?”

I don’t know which one of us is blushing more – me, because I’ve never had anyone _admire_ me like that before, or him, because he got caught staring? But I’m not… I’m not uncomfortable. 

“Oh, the plugs?” Shiro touches one of his ears, fiddling with the accessory. “They’re not that big. I used to have my lip pierced but I had to lose it if I wanted a promotion at the Garrison.”

“That’s a shame,” I say, keeping myself occupied, and he does the same as we talk. “Probably looked hot.” Well, yeah, I’m not lying, but I mean it in a joking way and I hope he catches on. The face he gives me tells me he does, but I still wink at him.

“I’ve also got, um,” he’s taking off his shirt and I completely flush. “I only have this one.” He shows me a gigantic, ornate, _beautiful_ Japanese dragon wrapping around his right shoulder and across his collarbone. It skirts the edge of his prosthetic and crawls down the back of his shoulder.

I can’t even form words, really. I’m just gaping at this absolute work of art, my eyes doing the work for my hands. I can’t touch him.

“Tell me about yours!” Shiro exclaims as he starts putting his shirt back on. “I haven’t gotten to see what exactly they are yet.”

“Oh,” I say, twisting awkwardly around. “Uh….” Where do I start?

Shiro gently takes hold of my left wrist, making me still. “Start with this one.” He turns my arm slightly to show the lioness on my upper arm. She takes up the entire space between my shoulder and my elbow and demands attention.

“I like lions,” I manage to say. Shiro’s prosthetic isn’t as cold as I thought it would be.

“And the one on your side? The, uh….” He releases my wrist and the skin there feels suddenly empty.

“Ram. Because I’m stubborn and headstrong.” I lift the hem of my shirt for him to see. I’m sweaty and my skin is glistening and my muscles are still tense and this is so _not_ among the list of anything I’ve done before and-

“I like the empty eye sockets. How your skin shows through all the dark coat. That’s really cool.”

“Thank you.”

“You have one on your collarbone, too, right?”

“Yeah. I like him.” I pull the collar of my shirt down a bit. “He’s a three-eyed fox saying, um, ‘They are watching you.’ In a way.”

Shiro looks at the artwork carefully. “’They are watching you. The trees are whispering in a tongue long dead.’ Shit,” he smiles, “where did that come from?”

I shrug.

“These are awesome, Keith.”

I smile at the floor. “Thank you,” I say when I slowly bring my head up, letting it drift to the side to avoid his gaze. I’m blushing. And grinning. And trying to hide both with monotony. “There’s more, in case you were curious. But aren’t we supposed to be working out?”

“I’m sorry for staring at you.”’

“Shiro, I told you, it’s fine.”

“You’re really fit. Like, I’m kind of jealous.”

“You’re, like, twice the size I am. Shut up. Are you calling me hot?”

“You said you have more tattoos.” He starts spinning me around, not even sure where they are, but tactfully avoiding the question with a cheeky smirk across his face.

We talk about Odin’s ravens battling on the backs of my shoulders, and how long the piece took to complete. I tell him that the gothic ‘S’ on my kneecap is for my favourite band (and that it hurt more than I’d care to admit) and the creepy shadow of a kid with glowing, empty eyes is from a video game called Limbo. He asks me about the miniature design on my wrist and I tell him no more than that it’s for my mother. I ask him how it feels to get a piercing, and he gives me a surprisingly detailed description. He then asks if my “mysterious bodyguard job” would allow facial piercings and follows with a light remark of how many scars my body has, how maybe I _am_ the super-intimidating commander’s-eye-puncher everyone imagines me to be.  

“Mysterious? What about the unexplained scar on your-“

That intrusive thought got out.

Fuck.

What have I done?

“I’m so, so sorry.”

He touches a few fingers to his nose as if he forgot what was there.

What have I _done?_

“Keith, hey, it’s okay,” Shiro says. I must look like a stray dog.

_What have I done?_

“I’m sorry….” Tears begin to well up into my eyes but I refuse to let them fall.

“Keith, no, that’s a fine thing to ask, it doesn’t bother me,” Shiro is gently pleading with me, holding my shoulders. He has to lean down slightly to be eye level. “It’s okay. You can ask me anything, okay?”

“I’m not a child,” I growl. I’m not angry at him. Not him.

“I know you’re not. You have to know that it’s okay to ask me things. I can’t expect you to open up about yourself if I don’t do the same. I want you to trust me, and I know that the thing in your head feeds you lies a lot of the time.”

“My brain?” My voice is still low, but I raise my eyes to him.

Shiro’s laugh lifts the tension. “Whatever you’re listening to up there.”

I sniff, rake my hands over my face as I turn away, intentionally pulling at my eye sockets, and groan loudly. Enough with this emotion bullshit. I’m at the fucking gym.

“So, weren’t you asking me something?” Shiro takes my initiative and moves towards a machine I’ve never bothered to use.

“How did you get that scar on your nose?” I ask with a little more confidence.

Shiro hesitates for a moment, as if he had already been thinking, all this time, of what to say, but now that he has the chance, he’s lost his words, and then, “I was involved with some not so great people when I was in my late teens. I had a friend – well, we’re not friends anymore. His name was Lotor. He got me into underground fighting with him. He was really good. We never fought each other and I don’t think I would want to.”

I stare intently at the mirror as I push through the rowing machine.

“I haven’t seen him in over five years. I don’t know where he is now. But things happened down there. I’ve seen… I saw stuff that shouldn’t be real.” He stops and rubs his forehead. “You probably think I’m crazy now. Don’t worry about it, it’s too impossible to explain.”

I come to a stop and look at him for just more than a moment. “Yeah, you’re crazy,” I mutter matter-of-factly as I look away and pick up the routine again.

The face I get from Shiro doesn’t believe me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not sure how many people are still keeping up with this work but I'm really happy with it so far and am very excited for what I have planned. It's also been fun to get back into art and make some sketches for this fic (which you can find on my tumblr mementonico, if anyone's interested)


	7. Chapter 7

Sum 41's "In Too Deep" has been looping in my head for two days. It's pissing me off. 

This doesn't feel like teens rocking out in an empty swimming pool.

This feels like despair.

_"His name was Lotor."_

My face staring back at me in the mirror like eyes watching from the forest. They are watching you.

_"I saw stuff that shouldn't be real."_

I take my anger out on the breathing body bag in front of me. 

I land hit after hit. Fists, knees, feet, elbows assaulting their target. The crippled man in front of me is full Galra; I can see it in his skin. The pores that seem to disappear, the hint of purple shadow and shimmer. Soft against my nails. Thick, because it doesn't rip like mine. 

He crumbles to my feet and holds his hand to me. Mercy.

No.

I've almost kicked him up from the floor but hands are pulling me, those horrible, heavy hands, they pull and they tighten and they're  _restraining me-_

"Enough!"

"You little shit!"

I bite the next hand that reaches for my shoulder. The owner rips it out fast enough to hurt my teeth and then suddenly I'm being pinned, what the  _fuck_ , get-

"-the fuck off of me!" I shout, blood from the hand I bit spitting from my mouth. A human hand, if it broke that easily. 

"I said enough, you fuck!" The speaker's gigantic hand, Galra, takes the entire back of my skull and shoves my face into the ground. 

I yell, my cheek scraping against grit. Someone has both my wrists like handcuffs against my tailbone. Get  _off!_

"Get off of him," someone says coolly. "Don't you know how quickly he'll kill you?"

Lotor is behind my narrow line of vision from the floor. The pushing, pressing, pinning has stopped, but the hands stay. The clamp remains on my head. I feel more than hear his footsteps as the weight vibrates the ground with each moment of contact. 

"Or have you forgotten your own mind?" Lotor's whisper is sharp, alarming, and unexpected in my ear. I flinch when the sirens in my head go off, but it makes the hand press.

_"GET OFF!"_

The kinetic energy launches from me. I aim it right for the neck behind me. Hard.

It nails the throat of the man holding me down. I feel him as though he's been yanked from me, hear as he lands. Hear him gasp for air, his windpipe gurgling. 

"I didn't fucking mean it," Lotor growls as he grips my hair and he's  _fucking pulling me_ , will they ever stop fucking  _pulling me around-_

I let this self take hold. 

With each yell comes heavy magic. Forces. Nightmares.

The circling audience roars like blood. Louder when Lotor hits me with something so fucking hard that I open my eyes, dazed, from the floor.

He hounds towards me. The weapon in his hand passes through the floor as he drags it, like a glowing ghost. It's a broadsword, as wide as my own body. 

"Something on your mind, curse worker?" Lotor snarls. 

"I'm fucking angry!"

Chaos ripples through me as I unleash whatever wants out so badly. It throws like daggers. 

Lotor puts weight into his swing. The ghost flies up from the floor, the end of the sword carving up to visibility. The blade deflects directly back to me, the blunt force knocking me right in the forehead. 

I hadn't met a Night Mare the night of the failed port mission. He had reflected it back to me. 

It hurts all the same and I can do nothing but scream.

It's such a pointed strike that it  _festers_ in my mind, it crawls in and it feels like it's breaking the bone. And I'm just laying here, shrieking, hands pressing into my forehead, my eyes shut in agony. I suddenly feel like I am very, very on fire. 

I try to pull it out of me. I do. I tug my hands away but it's like there's a magnet holding them to my skull. Just pull, just keeping pulling, get out, get out! Fire! Get out!

Fire! Fire!

_Fire!_

When my vision clears, I don't feel right. 

"He'll do the same thing to you," I hear Lotor's voice. 

His voice starts to fade. He must have turned away from me. "He's a Dreamcatcher. He's dangerous, and, apparently, he's angry."

I can't move.

Dreamcatcher. That's right. We're dangerous. Considered one of the most deadly. I'm deadly. 

I'm deadly and I can't move. 

All of my energy has been drained. I can't lift my legs, I can't shift my arms. I'm on my side, partially curled into myself. I wore my own self out. Nearly killed myself with my own curse.

_Curse worker._

The sensation that I'm breathing way too fast is suddenly very clear. I'm gasping, actually, my ribs heaving against the ground. 

I'm opening my eyes again, but now I'm in a different room. How did I get here?

"Strong enough to wipe yourself out. Nearly took your own life." Lotor. Again. Fuck that guy.

I'm sitting in a chair that's unfortunately comfortable. I'm not even properly upright. My feet sink into the floor and my knees splay. I'm leaned halfway back, my shoulders propping me up against the back of the seat. My chin nearly rests on my collarbone.

"Fuck you," I manage to groan.

"Shut up," Lotor snaps. I only watch him wearily. I'm not scared anymore. The anger and panic has abandoned me, leaving me feeling like nothing. He stands, angrily stepping towards me.

"I recruited you-"

"Blackmailed," I interrupt.

"-as an asset, and you have done nothing but disrespect my one,  _one_ , simple, easy,  _pathetic_ rule. Do you have any impulse control at all? Whatsoever?"

"No."

"Do you need supervision for your anger management? A fucking babysitter?" He's mad.

"Just kill me."

He looks at me. Differently. It brings a tiny, uncomfortable emotion to life for just a moment. He doesn't say anything, and I feel like I'm going to fall asleep. I ache, and my head hurts more than any migraine I've ever suffered, and I know I'm not bleeding out, I don't even think I'm bleeding at all, but that thing in my mind is scared. Something is dying.

"We're both bad guys. That's how it ends."

Lotor is very still.

I look at him for a heartbeat. I breathe out and let my eyes close. I'm tired. My head hurts so, so much.

"I am sure you are right on your behalf," Lotor says slowly, "but you must have me misunderstood."

I scoff, laugh even. "What do you think you are, a martyr?"

He leans against his desk, hands curved over the edge, ankles crossed. He looks at his feet. His eyebrows scrunch together, and when he looks back to me, he's nearly glaring.

I don't move anymore.

Lotor locks me in his office overnight with a guard. Not so much to keep me from getting out, because I'm too weak to stand, but rather to make sure I don't die in my sleep. 

The guard is chatty.

"He really just has two rules," he's saying. "Don't spy on him and don't use magic in his arenas. It's all out of bitterness, if you ask me. Kind of like you. You're really angry all the time, he's always bitter. I haven't seen him use magic in a very long time, and I've been here for years. Long enough to remember the Champion. Wow, was that a powerful one! It was like something possessed him when he entered the gate. No magic, though. Just a monster."

I listen to him because I have nothing else to do. I'm in the same position in this damn chair as I was in Lotor's meeting, but my head has fallen completely forward to let my jaw finally rest on my chest. I'm going to die with this middle-aged Galra spewing stories like a fanboy. 

"But, like I said, all bitterness. He lost the Champion to that curse magic. Drove him away. That's why Lotor doesn't allow unlawful magic, it cost him his friend. Did you know you killed that Galra that held you down? It's like you snapped his neck. Lotor's pretty angry about it. Don't do that again. God, that was disgusting to watch. And don't spy on him, you hear me? I'm trying to help you, seriously. He killed a bodyguard over that. He comes from that kind of environment, where people get into your head and manipulate you. He's right. I think you misunderstand him."

He's a villain. Takes one to know one. 

"If he actually wanted you to die he wouldn't have asked me to stay here. He needs you to live, Dreamcatcher. Did you know you're one of those? Not everyone knows what they are. Well, you're a Dreamcatcher. You're pretty scary, you know. I'm sorry Lotor reflected you like that, but I think he got the point across. No one messes with him. I won't mess with you. Have you ever met another Night Mare? I've seen a few. Demons, the few of you. You have unlimited access to that curse magic. Deathstroke, though. Those are the bad ones. Lotor's father's a Deathstroke."

That gets my attention.

I open my eyes and am almost surprised to find that he's been looking at me while speaking, like some kind of gentleman. He's pulled up a chair and is sitting right in front of me, his elbows resting on his thighs, his body drawn forward.

"Ah, there you are. How are you doing? Damn, you still look like you're dying."

Anger slowly comes back to me, my ever faithful companion. I'm still drained, but something in my gaze makes the man pull back only slightly.

"Yeah, Zarkon is his father. You ever heard of him? He's, hey-"

I don't realise my eyes have started slipping closed until the Galra man gently shakes me.

"You're not looking too good." Worry etches across his features. Just let me fucking die already.

"Here," he says, but as he reaches for me again, the strongest force I can feel in me meets him and pushes back angrily. Weak, but as harsh as it can be. It takes my breath from me but once it's made its point it leaves as quickly as it had appeared. The force is enough to freeze the man in his place, spooking him, but he seems to swallow his fear. "Oh, hush," he consolidates, but the cowardice is clear even as he comes towards me again, slower this time. 

He hooks his hands under my arms, big enough to wrap around my shoulders. He lifts me up and the straightening of my spine immediately relieves half of my body. I can't help but whimper, the movement of my limbs after stuck for so long feeling freeing but exposing every cramp. He repositions me delicately and when he settles I feel like I can breathe again.

My head tilts to the side and connects softly with the frame of the chair. 

"You'll be okay," he smiles, and, finally, no one is manhandling me. 

 

 

 

When I can walk, I leave without saying anything.

It's dark, and I look up. There's no moon. 

The headache stays with me for a few days and prohibits me from leaving my apartment. I have enough energy to feed Mittens a few times a day and occasionally refill my water glass. I don't remember the last time I've eaten, and a new part of me says that maybe if I ate something I wouldn't feel as shitty. The defiant part of me convinces me that the headache is the worst of what's holding me down. 

I've seen the texts Shiro's been leaving. I haven't responded to any of them.

Four days, I count. Four days to fully recover from the reflect of my own magic. Dizziness makes me stumble around the space so I stay in my bed most of the time. 

On that fourth day, my mind finally comes back to me.

It's like a plug has been pulled and the fog and pain drains away from me. I nearly fall multiple times on the way to the bathroom but washing my face is the most refreshing thing I've ever felt. All of the voices come back, filling the void they left behind. I stare at my reflection and would be shocked at the black eyes and sunken cheekbones if I hadn't seen them before. 

I've nearly made it to the kitchen when I pass out. It must be only a few seconds because nothing looks different, nothing sounds different, and my ears are still ringing more than they normally do. I raise my body, propping myself up to a sitting position with the noodles that have replaced my arms. I  _need_ to eat. 

The humming of my phone nearly terrifies me back onto my feet. I don't think of anything except that I probably should answer it. The thing's fallen out of my pocket, probably when I fell. It's within arm's reach. I don't look at the screen as I answer it, shutting my eyes, focusing focusing  _focusing_ on hearing. I forget to verbally answer.

 _"Keith?"_  

Shiro. "Shiro," I croak.

_"Are you okay? I haven't heard from you in five days."_

 

_"Keith. Are you okay?"_

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Keith, hey."

He's warm.

"You were passed out on the floor when I got here." His chest rumbles with each word. I don't know how he got in.

"Stay," I murmur. I think my lips are against his neck.

"It scared the shit out of me," he barely squeezes me. His arms are wrapped around me like a blanket. 

"'m sorry." The sound is barely heard.

He hugs me tighter. 

We stay like that. He shields me, my whole body cocooned into him. A hand softly strokes my hair, right on the back of my head, right where

I don't

I can't

handle

I,

I break.

"You're okay, you're okay," Shiro repeats. Over and over and over. 

"No." No. No.

"You're-" 

"I'm going to hurt you."

I don't know if Shiro is silent or if I just can't hear him over my crying, but his chest doesn't rumble. 

"I'm going to hurt you." He won't let me push him away. Each time I try to get my arms between myself and him, he pulls me right back. I start shouting. Nonsense, mostly. The same thing over and over. No. I'm going to hurt you. 

No.

He got in. 

The old woman tried to teach me how to love. She left me a man more angry and bitter than before. Love does not exist.

But he got in. 

"Listen to me," Shiro says, almost sternly. I try hitting him with my fist. He easily grabs my wrist and stills me. I shout some more.

"Keith, stop."

"No!" I yell. I drag it out. I put my whole voice into it.

"You're not going to hurt me."

"I'm going to kill you!"

"No, you're not."

"You don't know anything about me!"

He relaxes, slowly letting go of me. The result has me ripping away from him, but, somehow, I give in. I'm poised, I'm ready to hit him again, I'm ready to fight him, but he just sits there, watches me grasp the carpet for leverage just to stay sitting up. I cough out the last of my sobs and he doesn't move. He doesn't move. He doesn't move. I don't move. 

"I know you look for the stars every time you're out at night." His voice is quiet and fluid.

"Shut up." Mine is coarse and crackly.

"I know that you don't move on from them until you find all the main constellations."

I clutch my ears, pull at my hair, look sharply down so I don't have to see him. Close my eyes to block him out.

"I know you really like flowers. Roses, especially."

I count my breaths.

"I know that when you don't want to answer a question you just say it's a dumb question."

Five. Six.

"I know you really,  _really_ enjoy bird memes."

Eight. Nine.

"I know your favourite colour is black."

Ten.

"Actually, it's red." My voice is still rough, but stronger.

I have never seen Shiro cry. I have seen him happy, drunk, concerned, confused. But I have never seen him cry. 

He is very quiet. He tries to wipe away his tears before I can see them but he fails. I lean forward and press my forehead into his chest. His comfort melts the last of my pain. 

"Alright," he whispers. "Your favourite colour is red."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had an idea and went with it. At midnight. :)


	8. Chapter 8

"Come on, you need food." Shiro reaches down as if to pick me up and I nearly growl at him like some wild animal. 

"Please don't touch me," I breathe out.

I see Shiro's heart break. I get it. He spent the past months tolerating me, being patient with me, cleaning up after my meltdowns, putting away my motorcycle when I'm too out of it to be a contributing member of society. And now I'm just sitting here on the floor, my legs going numb underneath me because they're folded in all the wrong ways, telling him to fuck off.

He looks like he's going to cry again and it makes my throat close up. But he just walks away, goes to the kitchen, opens my fridge. 

Shiro doesn't say anything and neither do I. Actually, I feel myself start to barely doze off, my eyes resting as I continue to count my breaths in my head, finding a slow rhythm and doing my best to keep it even and quiet. 

Then, the easy sound of a song very familiar to me comes into my head. 

It's gentle as it slips into my conscience. It's another Reflections song, but not the loud one. It's soft. Charming. Hypnotising. The lyrics are clear.

_It was always my greatest fear,_

I haven't gone outside since returning from Lotor's office. I haven't spoken to anyone, haven't listened to anything but my jagged, hollow breathing and Mitten's occasional noises. I haven't opened my phone until I answered Shiro's call.

_everyone I love would disappear._

The old woman was very small, very still, and very cold when I found her dead in her sleep. I hoped for the years that followed that she had gone peacefully. I regretted finding her. I still regret finding her. I was the only one she had; no family, no siblings, no children. She died alone. 

_Just like the colour clear._

I tilt my head and let the tears fall as my eyes find the window next to my bed. It's too bright but I don't look away. There is no cat pushing her head against my hand. There is no friend holding my hand.

_Just like the colour clear._

The friend sets a glass of water and a bowl of soup next to my foot and then he is gone. My eyes are entranced by the light seeping in between the translucent curtains. My face is wet but my breaths are even and my hands are still. 

A long time passes before I blink and life washes over me. I'm really hungry.

A really long time.

Shiro is asleep on my couch. I thought he had left.

The soup is cold. 

"Is it something I did?"

I look up quickly, Shiro's tired eyes glazed over as they meet me. 

All I do at first is shake my head. "No," I finally say, and I sound defeated even to myself. "No, never."

"Okay." He wipes his face with his shirt. He's been crying.

"I'm sorry, Shiro." I owe him so much more than that. I ruined him. 

He rolls from his side onto his back. "Five days. I thought you had ghosted me. I thought something had happened to you."

I've ghosted many people before. I've never seen the aftermath.

"Something did happen to me." I only realise that's not really the best thing to say until after I've said it. That won't make him feel any better at all.

He sits up, his hands holding onto the edge of the sofa. When he looks at me again, I can see how red his eyes are.

I set the bowl on the floor. Mittens will probably get into the broth. Moving to the couch isn't nearly as hard as the earlier trip to the bathroom. The soup was cold, but it was good.

The cushions pull me in as I settle an arm's length from Shiro. 

"I didn't mean to. I'm sorry." I don't know where to start, so I start there.

"You didn't mean to what?" Shiro's voice sounds impossibly desperate. "Disappear? Die halfway?"

"I didn't mean to hurt you," I say immediately, because it's true. "I would never mean to hurt you. I couldn't. You're so, so important to me." I rub my face, the dried tears starting to itch. "Have you been thinking that this whole time? That this was your fault?"

His sniffle and the wipe of his arm across his nose answers that for me.

"You're not crazy, Shiro." I keep my eyes on the floor, my elbows propped on my knees and my head dangling between my shoulders.

I can feel the anxiety misting from him. I can hear him silently pleading though no sound comes from him. 

I hold my scarred hand out in front of me, the rest of my body keeping still. A small flame illuminates my palm, flickering like a mirage but just visible enough to be distinguishable against the gruesome mesh of what used to be my veins. 

My head pulls itself up and my eyes reflect the light. "This is my worst nightmare," I explain quietly.

Shiro stiffens but he doesn't shift. He says nothing. 

"When I was a child, my father set himself on fire." I let my gaze get lost in the candle. "He grabbed my hand, he tried to pull himself to safety, to me. I still see my arm ablaze every day. I still hear how he screamed and I still see how his skin turned to char. Just like mine."

I clench my fingers around the figment of my nightmares, quenching it, and let my hand fall back to its place. "My mother was Galra. They wouldn't let her keep a human child, so they dumped me in the foster system instead. I've moved across the continent because I've been shoved place after place because I couldn't settle in anywhere. I liked my families, but I wanted my own, and that selfishness gave me nothing but anger. 

"My mother wrote me letters. She begged me to never use magic, but I fed off of it. The possibilities were _endless_. Anything I could dream of I could bring to life. I learned how to draw the dreams of others. I learned how to twist them. When I was recruited by the Garrison, I stopped hearing from her. I was never given an explanation until I received money from her death. I started fighting. I learned how to defend myself and how to attack through not just dreams, but nightmares. It seemed that whenever I used my own, I would stop having them. But I didn't want to stop dreaming, I didn't want to forget my mother. So I took from others. I got into their heads and pulled their greatest fears. I destroyed them from the inside out. It got too comfortable and I eventually took one out of Iverson. I didn't hit him; he clawed that eye out himself. I just contorted his perception enough to make it believable. 

"I was really good at it. Manipulating. People hired me. People still hire me. I make a fuckton of money from it."

I swallow hard. 

"When I was nineteen, someone tried to open my guts." I briefly pull the hem of my shirt up to reveal the scar that carves across my left side. "Like they wanted to rip my heart out." I hold onto the fabric of my shirt after I've covered my torso once more. "An old woman beat him with a shovel. Knocked him right upside the head."

I almost laugh. "I cussed her out. I begged her to leave me to die. God, I've never wanted to die more than that. I bit her hand while she was spoon feeding me once I was strong enough. I was a piece of shit. But she was persistent. She never asked me something I wasn't capable of answering, but I never answered her anyway. We never exchanged names.

"I came back to her every week. She never married. Her only child was killed by a drunk driver a decade before she found me. She was so damn ancient, and her house smelled like old people. 

"She didn't think I was real. She thought I was a demon, a real, living demon. When we were out in public, she spoke to others as if I was her invisible companion. There was never a day I didn't enjoy spending time with her, even though my only friend thought I was the devil. I stopped fighting because I didn't want the day to come that she would be waiting for me and I wouldn't appear. I wanted her to know that I would always be there, without fail, even if she chased me away the previous week with her shovel."

Pause. Take a breath.

"I got back into killing, eventually. Not as trigger-happy, though. Not quite." No, not quite. "But that didn't last."

Shiro is looking at the floor.

"I killed a man five days ago without any thought at all. I snapped his neck without ever touching him. He was holding me down, shoving my face into the dirt. I wanted him off of me."

My voice starts to shake but I swallow my nerves. 

"I was strong. I've explored my curse my entire life, I've fought with other curse workers specifically to improve my own magic, but that was new. I don't even know what nightmare I pulled. I don't know where it came from. It came from something so buried, so hidden away. I should have scared myself but I just kept  _going_." 

My voice shakes more.

"I work for Lotor. I should have told you. I should never have hid that from you. I was irresponsible, I was careless with your emotions. I used you. One slip and I would have gotten you killed."

Now Shiro shifts.

"You're not crazy. What you saw was real."

"Lotor is  _alive?"_

His eyes are even wider than mine. He looks...

Relieved.

"He wants to strengthen Galra and curse workers. He wants to end their oppression by any means necessary. I thought he was a terrorist. He's a revolutionary with grey morals. He believes we're to be made stronger through conflict. How do you get peace out of that? But he's a leader. He has an army and he _believes in them_. He wants solidarity in humanity, but I can't see how he can possibly have enough good in him to get there."

"He was bloodthirsty when I left him." Shiro's voice is monotone.

"He was furious at me for killing that man. I brought chaos to his throne and he can't decide if he wants it or to discard it. I'm the only Night Mare he has. If I leave, he will end me. He doesn't trust me.

"We're going extinct because we're too dangerous. We're hunted. The more dangerous we are, the fewer of us exist. And he, himself, he's something completely volatile. I've never heard of, never fathomed what he can do. He can reflect any magic thrown to him. Anything at all. He can create... _weapons_... that sift between dimensions. I wonder if he can reflect his father's deathstroke and why he hasn't already.

"There's so many curse workers that are helpless. There's Shapeshifters that can only change their hair colour. There's Sirens that can only sing lullabies and Charmspeakers that can only say yes or no. There's Communicators that can only enchant butterflies." For some reason, I think about the kind guard that stayed with me through the scare Lotor dealt me. "There's Galra that know nothing but sympathy." My heart tugs. "They're all innocent, but they're wiped from existence."

Shiro's eyes are glassy and his brow is knitted with anguish. I'm rambling.

"I've known nothing but death."

He finally keeps his gaze on me. He has been stunned to such silence that his mouth looks glued shut.

"I ask for your forgiveness, because instead of protecting you, I ran away from you. I was going to get you killed. I didn't think I would be enough to keep you safe. I now know what I'm capable of and yet I  _still_ abandoned you. I understand if you want to leave-"

"Why would I leave?"

_Just like the colour clear._

"I'm not leaving you, Keith. I'm falling in love with you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is pretty much just a continuation from the previous chapter, so it's some more of that useless mind rambling but at least I'm finally in the direction I'm aiming for! It's very discouraging because I feel like none of this makes sense, but I really tried to include the pieces I felt were important, like one of the songs that has been inspiring this piece (Transparence by Reflections, which is the one mentioned in this chapter) as well as the unreasonable anger, frustration, and anxiety that I relate to both Keith and myself. As always, I greatly appreciate comments. They really keep me motivated :') 
> 
> (in particular is there anything I can do to help clarify aspects or are there traits/situations/problems you want to see covered??)


	9. Chapter 9

PART TWO

  

 

So... that happened. 

Shiro had confessed it so effortlessly, so  _eloquently_ , and the door must have unlocked right before that moment because Shiro knocked and I found myself not just letting him in but encouraging him, letting my mind wrap around him and everything he was and for the first time in my life I felt...

secure.

And it wasn't perfect, it wasn't completely free of mistakes, but it was fluent in the way we fell together. 

It was my turn to learn about Shiro. To listen to his stories of his past, to understand his traumas endured through his teen years, and to surprise myself with just how similar he is to me yet how differently he came out as a person. It was my turn to teach myself that just because I'm not the same person as him, don't react as he does, don't have the same aura or empowering and soothing presence as he does, doesn't make me a terror. It was my turn to let someone show me the parts of myself that radiated rather than let me fester in the parts that deemed me wicked. 

We don't share beds because we're worried about hurting the other. We both have nightmares and I keep my knife too close to my pillow. But we fall asleep on the couch in the middle of our favourite shows and sometimes I wake up late in the night to his head resting on my shoulder or his arm draped over my stomach. It's one thing for me to feel safe but it's the world for him to feel it, too. 

And I'm doing everything within my vicious powers to keep it that way.

"I'm going to let you back into the ring."

"Oh, joy." My arms are already crossed but I sulk deeper into the chair to make my sheer enthusiasm more visible. 

"I understand," Lotor sighs, "that I have not been entirely fair to you."

I bite my tongue to keep from angering the white-haired demon, but the high arch of my eyebrow says enough in itself.

"The last thing I want is to restrict you... your powers. But you must see how it is not only counterproductive but extremely dangerous to have you going around beheading my people."

I look down at the floor. It's a point. I haven't decided yet if it's a good one.

"I also," Lotor stands from his, well, throne, and meanders around. "recognise that I need to be more clear and direct with you. I am going to repeat this not with the intention to demean you but rather to give you no room to doubt me: there is no unlawful magic. You may defend yourself, and you may warn, but I have already given you one more chance than I have to others in the past. If you wrongly murder  _anyone_ , human, galra, magic user, I do not care - you will be executed."

I scoff. My first response is wow, shit, a little harsh? But I remind myself that, well, the fucker's actually being reasonable enough for a man basically holding me hostage. 

"Okay. I can respect that."

Lotor smiles slightly, not even mockingly. I want to be irritated but anger has not been leading my focus recently. 

"In addition," he continues, "you are due for a raise. While your last... performance... was less than ideal, I can not hesitate to admit you are a very important pawn. However, I am also not ignoring the fact that, apparently, an unworthy opponent will only bore you. I want you to improve but I also very much want to prevent you from causing too much destruction."

"I'm glad to hear my best interest is not your priority."

"And I am glad we can agree. From now on, you will only be faced with other magic users to reduce major injuries. I cannot have an army if you are all killing each other."

"Fair."

"I've been impressed with your talents over the past two months while you have been restricted to personal jobs, so I must ask, how do you feel about continuing?" Lotor has come to a still and watches me with a genuine curiosity.

"You're... asking me for my permission?" That's a first.

"Yes. I feel like I would benefit from your protection."

Yeah. "Ah. For your own personal interest." Right.

Lotor breathes out and for a moment I feel like he's aggravated with me. I have that affect on people. "Dreamcatcher, I am not out to get you."

I forgot he doesn't actually know my name. A small victory. I tilt my head back and sigh, grinning ironically. "Funny, you threatened me unless I agreed to join your _valiant_ efforts. I'm sorry that it hasn't exactly been my first thought that you would think of something on my behalf."

He just looks at me.

"Oh, come on," I continue. "You can't possibly think I'm an avid supporter of whatever this is you're trying to accomplish here. You've made it explicit that if I don't comply with your demands I'm good as dead. I've been nothing but compliant with you but do you really,  _really_ think I want to be here? Do you think I asked for this? I'm a fucking  _killer_. I've lost count of the lives I've taken. But now you come in here and try to convince me that it's a fucking  _gift-"_

"It is not my problem that you hate yourself." Lotor's voice is deep and silky.

"Fuck you! _'Magic users.'_ You make it sound like something admirable!"

"It  _is_ admirable!" Lotor's presence grows like the Iron Giant as he straightens himself. "It  _is_ a gift. It's alchemy, it's magic, it's bringing imagination and fantasies to  _life_. How can you not see that?"

"Because maybe the only time I'm actually able to use these  _talents_  is to destroy the minds of others, and because maybe the only people who ever truly appreciated them are  _dead_."

My fingers feel like claws digging into the arms of my chair. My jaw is clenched, my mind reeling. My jagged arm stings. 

"I'm sorry." Lotor's voice is very soft.

"No you're not," I spit, but the anger has lifted and there's no bite to my words.

"I am."

I push my hands into my face and pull at my skin. 

"My parents did not love me." 

"I don't care." I move my hands to muffle the sound but I can still hear him. 

"My mother drove my best friend, my only friend, away from me. My father... my father has done nothing but destroy. I want to undo everything he has caused. I want to burn it all."

I keep my eyes closed, but I listen.

"My father believes those who cannot wield magic are not worthy of living. He is a mass murderer, yet he reigns. He rules through fear, but he rules nonetheless. I cannot take him down alone. You call me a terrorist, a collector, but I am trying to be a source of learning and protection. There are magic users who come to me with no concept of their powers, no control, nothing but fear in their veins, and it is my job to strengthen them, to show them they are special, to make them see all they are capable of. You know, you  _must_ know, how many people want to bring an end to magic and those who wield it. How violent and deadly that discrimination can become. The way my father intends to settle that hostility is by killing the threat. I do not want death. I want peace. I want my people to be able to defend themselves, but I want humans to see the good that can come from... _this_."

It's something Shiro would believe in.

"I'm still not...  _like_ them," I say, but I sound as defeated as I feel. 

"You're stronger," Lotor tells me. Reminds me. "You can help me teach them."

I lean forward and sigh again. "When I...." I don't know how to explain this because I've never blatantly talked about magic with anyone. "When I first started, you know, being a Nightmare, I had no limits. It felt... liberating... but it was chaos. When I would think of causing a scratch I would end up taking a man's entire arm off. There's... gotta be others who need to learn that. How to confine themselves."

"The ring can help them learn."

"You can't have them learn on others all the time. They'll burst organs."

Lotor's brows scrunch when he thinks. "You're right. I need to build a way for them to harness their abilities first."

"And there's also the issue that a lot of people don't know, like.... what's stopping us from abusing this stuff? We can't deny that there's going to be users who will take advantage of the world anyway, the same way there're people who corrupt their own laws and weapons."

"Then we use that comparison. We use that persuasion that we are no better than humans. But... that implies they are afraid of us."

"They  _are_ afraid of us," I press. "And that argument hasn't worked in the past."

"I don't want them to be afraid of us." Lotor's tone is begging.

I rise from my seat slowly. I'm tired, and if Lotor expects me to fight today, I want to get it over with. "Then maybe keeping all these secrets from society isn't such a great idea."

Lotor looks at me funny. I've put something in his head.

"Don't get any stupid ideas," I finish without looking over my shoulder as I leave the room.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a short chapter to keep this going and get it moving! We've officially moved on into part two and it's definitely not going to be shits and giggles. Also, thank you thank you thank you to my best friend for helping me defeat writer's block ilysm


	10. Chapter 10

"You have to have your thumb on the outside of your fist, out of the way," I explain to the young fighter. He's even smaller than me. "If you wrap your hand around your thumb, with it inside your grip, you'll break it. Make sure it's tucked below your curled fingers." He copies my position, and this time, he gets it right, so I let him swing at the mannequin. He shakes his hand afterwards and looks mildly pained.

"Well," I move around him and take his spot in front of the mannequin. "You hit it with the flat of your finger. Don't do that. Hit with your knuckles, but it's extremely important that you align the first two knuckles in your hand with the bones in your forearm, or else's you'll hurt yourself again. Try not to hit with your last two knuckles, because it might break your hand." I square up and throw my arm out. The movement is quick and the sound is satisfying. The young Galra nods. 

"Dreamcatcher," Lotor calls from the doorway. 

"If something hurts, you have to change what you're doing," I say as one last tip as I back away from him and move towards Lotor. "I'll be back tonight and I want to see what you can teach yourself. You're doing great."

Lotor leads me out of the underground lair and my eyebrows raise at the sight of a ridiculously nice white Mercedes parked outside. I'm surprised to watch Lotor drive us himself.

"I like to drive," he says. The sun is creeping towards the horizon and its rays paint the tinted windows scarlet. The almost unnoticeable purple shimmer of Lotor's skin looks almost pink in the light. 

I can't help but smirk as I lean my elbow against the inside of the door and tilt my head. "Me too." My eyes can't help but watch the mirror next to me. I can see the navy Chevrolet behind us, the way the sun reflects off the chrome. The trees bend and sweep over the car's curves, the navy seeming to fade in the sky's reflection.

My eyes open before I realise I've zoned out, and the headlights of the car behind us blinking on after the sun has set begs my immediate attention. It's the same navy Chevrolet.

"We're being followed," I say nonchalantly.

"I wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt that they just happened to be on the same path as us," Lotor replies, and I think he's making a joke, but I really can't tell until his lip curls up just minutely. 

"They're not exactly being subtle." I still haven't moved much since opening my eyes. My cheek is rather comfortable in my hand and the expensive cushions may or may not play their own part. I let my eyes watch through the mirror while my finger starts to tap. 

"In their defense, I don't exactly keep a low profile," Lotor explains with a flair of his hand. "If someone wants to find me, I do not make it so difficult."

I unbuckle my seat belt, roll down the window, and raise myself to sit halfway out the car, facing the trailing traffic. 

"What are you doing?" I hear Lotor ask, almost amused. 

"Nothing." The Chevy moves a lane over and speeds up significantly, passing us in a rush. The windows are darker than ours and I can't see a single thing, but I think there's more than one person in the car. An awful suspicious bystander as far as Lotor's concerned. 

I wiggle back into the seat and buckle up, but the whipping air is refreshing so I leave the window down, resting my elbow on the sill and letting my fingers find the top of the car. 

"Aren't you worried someone's going to get you one day?" I'm curious, but my tone isn't nearly. 

Lotor shrugs. "No, not really. I have more than enough resources and, while I would prefer not to, I have extensive use of my powers. Plus, now I have you!" 

"Tsk." My eyes nearly roll back into my head and my arms cross as I sink more into the seat.

"Quit slouching," Lotor demands.

I make a face of disgust at him and remain how I am. "The more I keep secret, the less people bother me."

"But the more secrets you keep, the more you hold on the line," Lotor says pointedly. "It may be appealing to hide every detail of yourself, and I admit you have done a stellar job, but someone will find you eventually."

"No they won't." The navy Chevy is within sight in front of us. 

"I'm starting to rethink moving training regimens to your estate," I mutter as I reach behind my seat to find my pistol. "This jackass seems to know exactly where we're going."

"You may have a point," Lotor resounds. 

Four, five, six bullets loaded into the magazine. "You've seen Kingsmen, I'm sure," I add. "They could kill all of us in one blow if we're simply in the same obvious place. Like, you know, a palace. Who even owns a palace in New York?" I enjoy popping the load into the gun. 

"I do," Lotor snickers.

"Lovely."

"Do not open fire on the freeway!" 

I pout. Lotor's long hair is flying back from the open window and he looks like a nerd. 

The Chevy slows until it's even with us, fixed on my side. My window is still down and I can't see any more inside their car than I could before, but I smile and wave my gun at them. Lotor's sigh is big enough to take all the air out of him. 

The way he weaves through traffic is really not unlike the way I ride my motorcycle, but it's got a bit more of a fear factor to it considering we're in a  _vehicle_ and not just on a little bike. Our pursuers don't appear quite as skilled.

"Point taken," Lotor drones. "This trip is a waste, then, as it seems I can not even chauffeur you to my own home just to give a tour without company."

"May as well turn around."

"May as well."

Lotor stomps the brakes and the car jerks and then spins as he expertly handles the wheel, pressing the gas on the way out of the maneuver. The Chevy flies past us and Lotor uses the distraction to take the nearest exist and get away from civilians. 

I'm not one for speed limits, but Lotor has weird morals. The Chevy catches us soon enough and we lead it block after block until Lotor loses them in a parking structure. He parks between a Civic and a Corolla and ushers me to find the followers before they find us. 

"Lure them out," he directs. "I don't want them touching my car."

I holster my gun between my pants and my back but it's the pressure of my knife at my ankle that's more comforting. I reach for the gun once we're out of the car, but Lotor tells me we're still in plain sight. Keep it down and do things the boring way.

He calls it the "civil" way. I grab the gun anyway. 

The pursuers have dispersed if I can tell anything from the scattered echoes of shouting around the complex. 

Lotor stays near me and I can tell he wants me to follow his lead, but I hear footsteps and I don't want to be stopped.

"Let's go," I whisper as I dart off with my gun raised, and Lotor scrambles to catch up, cursing. 

I sneak up on the first guy easy enough and kick his knee in, slamming my elbow into his stomach. He drops forward onto me so I use his body as my personal shield and fire through his shoulder at the fellow behind him. I spy a third man down at me from the level above, so I drop my carcass shield, aim, and fire. A fourth tries to surprise me from behind, but I've already seen him in my peripheral and I don't hesitate to pull the trigger. 

One man jumps on top of me from the stairs. It's only a moment of grappling before he takes my fourth bullet. 

Lotor is throwing fists with someone to my right. His "civil" way. I make it easier on him and spend the fifth bullet. He looks at me incredulously, but I'm already running off and he's having to sprint after me to keep up.

There can't be more than two left from how many a Chevrolet can comfortably carry. Lotor follows me up the stairway, heading away from his beloved car. The man who leaps at Lotor honestly catches me by a bit of a surprise, but Lotor throws a punch, a kick, and two more punches, and the man is down.

"See? Boring is better," he grins.

I fire at the sneaking man in front of us.

"That was very loud." Lotor frowns in exasperation, grabs my gun, and pockets it out of my reach. 

"It was empty anyway," I grumble as he leads the way back to the car. 

Lotor is very quiet as he settles in his seat and buckles his belt. I make a point not to deliberately watch him, but when he sighs as he flicks the ignition I find myself itching to do something.

"What's wrong?" 

The way he looks at me is, to my own shock, not unfamiliar. There's a light in his eyes, a subtle expression that says he's not used to the question, that he may have never even heard the question, that it's so new to him yet he's been desperately reaching for it for a lifetime. I look away because it's an expression I've worn before myself.

"I..." he looks down at his lap when I continue to study him, ready to listen to the answer. Shiro always listens to me, always keeps eye contact, always is genuinely interested in what I have to say. "I wanted something from this. When you first introduced the idea that I could harbour a place, no, not just a place, a  _home_ for magic users to learn, to train, to  _thrive_ , I was so... adamant on bringing that idea to life. It sounded reasonable, doable. Like the X-Men! Bringing promising people together to achieve greatness. Yet, here we are, unable to get even a single magic user to a safe zone. I am followed, supervised, tracked. I feel like after all the work I have put into this underground empire, I receive nothing in return, when all I want is to be able to give more."

I wait for him to say more, but his eyes are lost. I think, for the first time in his life, Lotor doesn't know what to do.

"Well," I say casually, "like you said earlier: you have me." I don't say it as joyously as he had before, but I mean it. "You asked me to be your bodyguard, and I accept. We ran into problems but, look, the problems are bleeding out on the floor. I'm more than just some magic user. I went through a year of refusing to acknowledge my abilities. I focused on being fit and capable of surviving without them. I can defend myself against an army with my fists and a knife, and I'm sure I can defend you, too. And maybe, like, five other people. But no more. That's too much responsibility."

He looks at me, and the small smile he gives shows me he understands my humour. 

"Thank you."

 

 

"So, you're really his bodyguard now?" Shiro asks playfully from the stove. 

"Yeah," I respond, taking a sip from a boat drink he's made. "I guess I wasn't really lying to you after all. Hey, adding these berries was a great idea."

"Yeah?" He watches me push a raspberry with a straw and try to maneuver it into my mouth. I hear him laugh at my efforts, but when my teeth finally get a hold of the berry, I make a face at him.

"Thanks for coming over," Shiro says, and he has a grateful smile on his face but his voice is subdued.

"Hey, yeah, I love coming over." I get up from the couch, set my drink on the counter, and move over to his side. I lean back and prop my hands on the edge. The marble is cool against my lower back. "You're just a doorway away from me, Shiro. I'd much rather be with you here than in my own room alone."

"Okay." His lips only lightly tug but he looks relieved, as if I've whisked away a fear. 

"I mean it, Shiro." 

He looks up at me with gigantic eyes. "Okay," he nods.

"You know," I start, gaze trained on the floor, "I've learned how to be a really good listener, recently. I wonder who taught me that."

He giggles a little, but his eyebrows are still scrunched.

"So," I move towards him again and this time I lean on his side and rest my head on his shoulder. "I'm ready to listen whenever you're ready."

He pulls his arm out from under me and I feel it wrap around my body. He's always warm. His jaw brushes against my hair and I feel him nod. We stay like that for a bit, me seemingly supporting him while he stirs the spaghetti. His hold on me is firm, but my eyes watch his hand.

"Shiro, you're shaking."

He nods again against my hair. 

"Sit down," I coax while I take the spoon from him. "Keep me company. I'll take care of the rest of dinner." There really isn't much left to do but I'm afraid he'll drop the pot of pasta when it comes time to move it. 

He takes a seat on one of the stools by the counter not far from me. "I had a... long day," he finally says. 

"Do you want to talk about it?" I try to keep my tone soft and relaxing, try to keep it from becoming a big deal. It's a really big deal, but I don't want Shiro to panic. 

"I don't know." He runs his human hand through his hair and pulls on it for a second. I know the sensation of combing your real skin through your hair as opposed to something... not so real. "I woke up feeling weird. I guess it got a little worse."

"What kind of weird?"

"Shaky. A little dizzy."

"Panicky?"

"Yeah."

"Don't worry," I smile openly at him. "I'll be here to catch you."

The smile he returns has just enough more life to it.

"You play with your hair," I point the spoon at him before dropping it in the sink and draining the pasta.

"You tap your fingers," he replies.

"I do."

I taste a bit of the sauce. "Shiro, this is delicious!" 

He beams with pride. He needs a good distraction. "Hunk taught me a lot about cooking. He's got a real talent - he can create anything he wants out of scratch." He goes on to tell me about what Hunk has taught him and how gifted the kid is, and yet how modest Hunk is about his talents and hobbies. As we sit down to eat, he continues to chatter about all the kids, and I listen. He feels like Pidge's protector and makes it his responsibility to be a reliable figure when they need one. He tells me how their father went missing on a Garrison mission a few years ago, how he did his best to step up as a good friend in the man's absence. He glows when he talks about Lance, the social butterfly, how he used to be such a shy kid who shrank into his shell but who now has a tight leash on his personal demons and who blossoms when given the chance to prove himself. He even makes a remark about Allura, how she sometimes pushes herself too far trying to do the right thing, the lawful thing. 

He loves them all. 

But when I clear his place, I hear the loud crash of a shattering glass behind me, and my love for him is overwhelming in the instant it takes for me to be at his side. 

He is very still, his hand frozen in time, reaching for the already fallen cup. 

"Hey, Shiro," I whisper as I slowly take his hands in mine and try to guide his eyes to me. It works, but his gaze nearly makes me crumble. He's terrified. "Hey, Shiro." He's plagued with PTSD, but my attacks have almost always been fits of screaming and anger. Now, Shiro's insecurities are exposed in front of me, and he is so, so quiet.

His wonderful brown eyes are burning saucers, the whites around his irises the size of the moon. It takes me a moment to get away from their spell, but when I do, he's holding his breath.

"I'm right here, Shiro."

He squeezes my hands faintly. One step at a time.

"You're going to breathe with me, okay?"

Another tiny squeeze.

"We're going to take deep breaths."

"Okay." An almost inaudible, cracked whisper. 

"One."

He nearly chokes.

"Two."

He doesn't want to let his breath go, but I keep counting.

"Three."

His hands squeeze again.

"Four."

He takes a deep breath.

"Five."

Another.

"Six."

And Another.

"Seven," he says with me. "Eight, nine, ten."

He breathes.

I sleep on the couch with him, and when I wake up around one in the morning his head is on my thigh and his arms are wrapped around my legs. I know I won't be going back to sleep so I flip on the television and quietly watch whatever's on. Around two, the regular shows end, so I switch to Netflix and turn on something silly that I don't really have to pay attention to. My hands comb Shiro's hair, twirling the white tuft at the front. 

In the morning, we exchange apartment keys. In case anything happens. In case he needs me there. In case he has to break down my door again because he hasn't heard from me in four days. 

He asks me how many times we're going to be saving each other.

I tell him as many times as it takes.

 


	11. Chapter 11

My knife is my only memory of my mother. I know she was a magic user. I know she was Galra. I know that I didn't inherit her Galra genes, but I have more than my fair share of magic. The knife, though, is the only tangible thing I have from her. 

It balances perfectly across my finger, and when I hold the tip of the blade with the end of my digit it balances ever more dangerously but still barely wavers. It took me years to master that and I found myself in the past flying across my room trying to keep the knife from tipping off my finger. Now, I still practice flipping it in my hand, experimenting with different ways to keep it moving. The emblem glows a deep purple whenever the knife tastes blood, but I haven't nicked my hand in years.

I barely have to move to keep up with the balance of the knife as I sit here in Lotor's kitchen, alone. I'm in a corner where I have a direct view of the entryway, shielded by the island in the middle of the room. It's silent enough that I can clearly hear the palace's giant doors slowly pushed open by a stranger coming in. 

I'm rather comfortable on this sofa. Who has a one-person sofa in their kitchen? Lotor. 

The guy looks like he's trying to sneak in, and how he actually unlocked the doors is beyond me, but he's here now and my eyes are already trained on him, my knife still balancing precariously on my fingertip. 

He finally spots me and his gaze locks on mine. My face emits all the emotion of a rock, even as he comes barging at me, yelling.

My finger pushes the knife up into the air and my hand meets the handle, but I just have to duck away from the man's incoming fist. He's actually pretty large, and the commotion he causes as he barrels past me, fists flying, has to at least grab Lotor's attention, wherever he's gone.

The man jumps to his feet quicker than I give him credit for and tries to swing his arm in an arc behind him to reach me, but that's just too easy to block. I grab his wrist and use his gigantic momentum to propel his body downwards, striking his ankle swiftly with my foot to finish the movement. 

My knife is buzzing in my hand but i just hold it a little tighter as I grab a kitchen chair and set the legs across the man's neck. I take a seat, the intruder pinned underneath the furniture beneath me, and cross my arms to rest them on the back of the chair, sure to keep my knife in clear view. 

"Who are you?" I ask with mild interest.

The man starts gagging. Not my fault his neck is the size of a bowling ball. 

"Who do you work for?" 

"Sendak," he chokes out past a swollen tongue. He manages to reach his hands up and waves them weakly in a mercy gesture. 

I nod, stand, and pull the chair off of him, leaving him to gasp for breath on the tile floor. He doesn't surprise me when he lunges for me, but I just duck again and land an elbow to his gut, which leaves him doubled over. 

"I don't know who that is, so you're going to have to try again."

He goes for my legs and actually manages to hoist me onto his back, but I just roll with the motion and before he's aware what happened I'm up on my feet with my foot pressing on his neck. 

"What's going on?!" Lotor shouts as he seemingly floats into the kitchen. 

"We have a guest," I try, sort of shrugging. The intruder takes my brief distraction to shove my foot away and try to make a run for it. I finally give my knife its wish and leave it in the back of the man's skull just before he reaches the doors. 

Lotor and I are both quiet for a moment, but I can feel the questions and confusion rippling off him. We both just stare at the body, blood seeping out across the floor. 

"Who's Sendak?" I ask, still as stone. 

"A threat," Lotor replies behind me. His voice is never louder than it needs to be. 

I walk over to the stranger and remove my knife. It glows.

"He is an adviser to my mother," Lotor continues after my prolonged silence. "Enhanced by her dark magic and bloodthirsty beyond words."

"I've seen worse," I say as I wipe my knife with a dishtowel. 

I let that rattle in my head for the hour it takes to return with Lotor to the ring. If he's going to be a leader, he has to learn how to teach. It's not going poorly. 

He doesn't exactly have a way with children. Not that there are kids in this hellhole, but there  _are_ younger magic users who have absolutely no grasp of their abilities, and some of them are too weak to describe while others are unchained chaos. 

I don't have a way with children either, but I don't plan on leading an empire, so I hang out in the corner to "supervise." In truth, I've found Lotor's laptop. Yes, he knows I have it. 

Sendak's records aren't discreet in the slightest, and I get the feeling he's the kind of man to make an entrance. He was once one of Zarkon's most trusted and loyal fighters before Haggar found a particular use for him. Apparently, she was drawn to his sadistic and powerful style, and has created some kind of Galra tech weapon to replace an arm he lost in what the files say as [deleted information]. Scrolling down the screen and peeking into folders, I can't find any photo evidence of his prosthetic, and my curiosity is irritating me. 

Galra tech. Maybe it's similar to Shiro's. 

I can't imagine Shiro using his arm for destruction. I can't picture him in this place. 

"It is not a good sign to see Sendak deploying an assassin at this point," Lotor mutters as he settles down next to me, pulling his hair out of his face. He must have been sparring.

"Not much of an assassin," I snort. 

"Before I left the ties of my parents, Sendak was just an egotistic dreamer. He had a very predictable attack and I believe my father demoted him," Lotor explains. "Most of this information is gathered by my secret intelligence. We have had only few leads on his upgraded weapon, but, knowing my mother, it is not a simple gadget."

"Mm."

"If he is sending out an assassin, scout, whatever you want to call that nuisance, he is planning something."

"I feel like that's a given."

Lotor scowls at me. "Things have changed since you joined us. I do not assume my mother is happy with that."

"What can you tell me about him that these files can't?"

Lotor's brows tighten as he thinks. "He is a Manipulator. Do not take him lightly. He plays with his food."

There's not much I can do to get that comment out of my head for the rest of the night.

Shiro doesn't press while we're at the gym that evening. He keeps me in the corner of his vision but leaves me to my personal space to be lost in my thoughts. I should be thinking about how to counter Manipulators, how to one-up someone who specialises in psychological warfare and military strategy, but all I can do is glance at Shiro's arm from time to time and try to think up designs for how Sendak's could possibly look any different. 

My workout is turning to be more of a warmup with the minimal effort I'm putting in, but the slam of Shiro's fist on a punching bag has me ripping out of my mind. 

There's a thing or two I could learn from him. 

"Shiro." His eyes brighten, his cheekbones rising up his face. "Spar with me." 

He tilts his head slightly and his fingers loosen from his grip. I take his hand and lead him to another area of the gym and pull him onto the boxing square. His hands are already wrapped but it doesn't take me long to do my own. 

"What do you want me to do?" His voice nearly stutters. 

"Hit me."

"But-"

I swing at him and he easily blocks my arm. His eyebrows creep further up his forehead in a mixture of surprise and concern. He's the cutest thing I've ever seen but I have to be quick if I want another shot. He doesn't keep his weak spots open and now he's ready. 

I throw another fist but he dodges to the side before swinging at my face because of course Shiro's fighting style is straightforward, and that's my immediate thought as I flinch my head away and finally graze my fingers across his cheekbone. It's a halfway miss. 

He's light on his toes already, ready to move, and while I'm so much smaller than him he has no trouble keeping up as I bounce around him. I aim another punch but as I swing I duck my chest down so I'm below his throwing arm that I've already anticipated, but he's ready for the hand I have coming at him as I straighten and now it's his turn to get below my shoulders and he nails a hit to my abdomen. I don't expect the second hit he gives me, but I'm still able to block it just in time. 

We part again, our feet just brushing the mat. He comes in with two throws that land where my face used to be, but I'm already crouched below his level. I thought I would be able to get past him by getting below his midsection but he's almost as quick as I am and my tactics aren't working. He's skilled.

This is what the Garrison teaches. Hand to hand combat. Militaristic regime. Close quarters, quick movements, anticipating your opponent. 

We continue this dance for a couple minutes. I've waited for him to tire out, but that doesn't work. I've tried coming at him with my legs, but even though it's not the Garrison style, he's seen it before. I try getting out of his space, but he just waits for me to come back in, and until I do, nothing gets done. 

My style is driven by impulse and anger. It's not long until his collected, controlled, direct energy gets the better of my frantic speed and leaves me pinned underneath him. 

I slap the mat twice with my hand and he lets up. 

"You're really fast." He's breathing heavy and it takes me a moment to realise he was sure to never reveal his exhaustion in the moment.

"You're difficult," I admit. I don't feel like I've been bested. I feel like I've met a challenge, and, instead of eliminating it, I want to learn from it. 

"I'm sure that-" he takes a sip of water "-Iverson told you countless times not to let your anger drive you. But I don't think that works for you at all." He smirks, and I smile back. "I think you should try focusing it. You let all your impulses out, but they each take their own form. Do you think you can pinpoint them?"

"You'll have to explain that differently." I gulp down half my bottle. 

"Like...." I like watching him think. "You don't need to hit harder, that's not what I'm saying. You've got force, you're just erratic. It definitely works against a lot of people who aren't used to that and who can't predict what you're going to do next, because you do have that air about you. You're really unpredictable, on the surface. But," he smiles, "I know you. I know just how unpredictable you are to the point that if my imagination is wild enough I can see what you're going to do next, and I know that calm and control counters you because it makes you fester."

"Like how you waited for me to get back in your space."

"Exactly. Patience yields focus."

"Okay. That makes sense. Again."

"Agai-" but Shiro can barely finish the question when I'm throwing myself right back at him. 

It's really easy to get caught up in things. I get caught up in my anger, my determination, and my fears. It shows when I fight, but Shiro's seen it in all its forms. We spar late into the evening and I finally notice when my agility starts to get the best of him after six rounds. The pride engulfs me, but I catch myself just as he latches onto my surge of emotion. 

I win the sixth round, but he came out on top four other times.

I want to go again. My eyes are wide and my body is ablaze. But Shiro is sprawled out on the mat, laughter bubbling past his panting. "Enough!" he manages. 

The fight seeps off of me and by the time I reach down to help him up I find my legs shaking.

His grin is contagious. 

After showering and changing, Shiro says Lance and Hunk want to meet up for drinks at Dave and Buster's. I have no idea who Dave or Buster are but Lance's texts are too demanding to deny. 

"I'm gonna tell him," Shiro winks to Lance.

"Don't you dare!" 

"Dave and Buster's is a place?!" The smell of pizza is almost making my mouth water and the flashing lights from the arcade are all beckoning me at once. "You guys were just going to let me go on like an idiot!" I feign offense but I'm laughing with them. 

"Okay, I don't know about you guys, but games can wait," Hunk holds his hands up, palms out, and motions his thumb towards the counter. "I'm starving."

"Me too." My stomach could have answered that for me if the surrounding noise wasn't so obtrusive. "What do you guys want to eat?"

"Pizzaaaaaa," Lance cries in a trance. "Pepperoni. Extra bell peppers."

"I could go for some wings and a sangria," Shiro chirps. 

"Oh! Double on those wings," Lance pitches in.

Hunk and I end up ordering bits and pieces from almost the whole menu for us all to split and Lance and, surprisingly, Shiro gobble most of it down. Hunk ends up going for another burger while I'm still in shock that Shiro could eat so much. I'm the only one here who's stuffed after a few slices of pizza, but I order a margarita after not feeling my two beers. 

Imagine Dragons is playing in the background, and I can only tell because Shiro has a new infatuation for the band. I called him out for his lie about being a pop punk fan, but he defended himself by proving that pop punk still applies to the 2000s genre, and I caved in. His taste in alternative music, though -  _that_ I can really get behind, especially now as I hear the first words of Mr. Brightside.

We're battling in a car racing game and I'm totally winning, but the lyrics are taking over our attention and the race turns into who can just finish the game before getting completely lost in singing. I win, because Shiro is so,  _so_ into Mr. Brightside, and he's gotten Lance to join him.

I'm thrown months back to Lance's house party, losing myself in all that Shiro is as we're yelling along to Face Down, shitfaced and not giving a damn about the world. It was a rush of noise, of music, of pure happiness that I had never dreamed would ever grasp me, but it was the first time Shiro had looked at me the way he now does daily, and watching him writhe on the floor, playing whatever imagined air guitar with Lance, who is drunk enough to be booted from the place, has me consumed with love. 

We all stumble out the door before anyone can kick us out, but my courage waits until after we've parted with Lance and Hunk to grab Shiro's jaw and pull him down. He nearly trips and falls but I kiss him anyway, and he wraps his arms enthusiastically around me and pulls me as close as I can be.

In this moment, this is all I care about. 

 

 

 

_please be safe today_

I don't see the text until I've arrived at Lotor's ring. 

_i'm always safe_

I know he doesn't believe me, even for a second, but I also know that he trusts that I always try.

_promise you'll call me if anything happens?_

My eyebrows scrunch and my mouth frowns.

_something always happens. are u ok?_

The dots on the screen ripple rhythmically.

_i had a_

_bad dream_

_it's probably nothing_

 

 

 

I'd rather be participating in the fighting than watching from the sidelines, but that's where Lotor's stationed me today. Two young Galra are wrestling on the floor, powers having slipped their mind. Lotor organised this evening to really let everyone play - place bets, wreak full (but not deadly) force of magic, and stretch limits. Part of me wonders if I'm still being restrained from the last time I was allowed in the arena. 

Lotor had said I could come back two months after I killed a man, but he still hasn't scheduled a fight for me. I can't complain, because this bodyguard business has been a fitful challenge in itself. But my limbs still itch to get out and show the wrestling Galra how to fight, especially after proving myself to Shiro, especially now, when the chance is right in front of me. 

Yet, here I am. Babysitting. 

One of the Galra is tossed backwards and caught by the gamblers, and in a show he stares at his hands and suddenly remembers his worth. He summons roots from his veins as he charges back, tangling vines around his opponent until the other is pinned to the floor, wiggling helplessly. 

Each pair proves more interesting as time drags on, and now it's almost a game for me to pick out mistakes and see how the fighters fix them. A few even manage to surprise me, particularly those with powers I haven't encountered. 

One fighter, a human, fights like he walked right out of the Garrison doors. 

He far outweighs his Galra opponent, both in strength and in ability, and in no way is it a fair fight aside from the fact it appears he has no powers, or at least is opting not to use them. His opponent is a form of Hypnotist; I can see moments where he manages to either stun the Garrison cadet or just put his mind to rest for a moment. I can't tell which. However, the cadet quickly adapts to avoid the Galra's eye contact, and suddenly the Galra has no grasp whatsoever. The cadet goes for his knees and ankles and takes in his winning glory with a kind of triumphant glow that gets under my skin. 

Now, I'm  _really_ itching to fight.

The monster of a man that enters my vision, though, puts that itch to rest, along with all the side conversations and cheering. Everything and everyone is dead silent.  

"There is a Night Mare here." His voice is like a cannon. "I am looking for you, Dreamcatcher." 

I'm leaning against the pillar I haven't moved from since the bets started, my arms crossed and my head down. My eyes just barely peek through the front of my hair, peering up at the man who makes his way to the center of the circle. 

"Come out, come out, wherever you are," he teases with a hiss. The ground groans as he walks. As he pushes his way into the limelight, I see the beastly metal arm held close to his shoulder by an energy magnet with claws at the knuckles that remind me more of a dragon's talons. "Lotor's new right hand man, feared as a killer, and yet he can't even show his face."

Wait for him to come to you.

He scans the sea of increasingly terrified eyes, even reaches my own and passes on, before he turns his attention back to me and remains there. 

"There you are." He comes at me with contained power, his weight making the ground tremble. He must be eight feet tall. One of his eyes is just a bright red orb, and it burns holes into me as he approaches. Before he's within my space, he throws his gauntlet directly at me. 

Patience yields focus.

It hits the pillar where my head was a second before, but I don't bother to glance at how the claws sink into the concrete. The energy magnet demands not to be touched, and I obey, so instead I drive my knife upwards into the empty shoulder socket, taking advantage of the gauntlet being thrown forward for just that moment. 

Unlike with Shiro, I have a very drastic advantage of agility and speed. Sendak uses his slowness to pull in opposition against the gauntlet, which now comes flying to me at unreal speed. 

I jump up and propel myself off the gauntlet midair so I end up crouched on Sendak's shoulders. I see the weak point in his throat and my knife goes for it.

A massive, real hand grips my neck and yanks me down before I can strike and the ground crumbles around me as I plummet. 

He towers above me, hand forcing my neck into the rubble. I'm choking and grasping for purchase but he just shoves more and more and

the magic forces itself from me in a storm.

It hits him full force, the same that impaled the man months ago who wouldn't let me go. I didn't go for the neck, I should have gone for the neck, but the blast lands square in his chest and he stumbles back a few steps. 

I have no gun. My knife won't be enough to take down this monster. Half the audience is too stunned to move while the other half have begun to evacuate. I have nothing but magic to keep me alive.

"What are you made of when your back is up against the wall, boy?" Sendak grins, his eyes menacingly sharp.

"Watch me," I snarl. 


	12. Chapter 12

Sendak flings his gauntlet at me, the energy magnet always remaining perfectly centered between shoulder and prosthetic each time he wields it. If I can find an opening to get that ball just slightly off its balance, that might be the end. 

That magnet does not want to be touched. I want it.

I draw up a shield of force to block the gauntlet and trap it there. Sendak tries to yank his arm back but each time he pulses a wave of kinetic energy builds in front of me. I release his arm in time with one of his surges and the force of the magnet whips him backwards, although it takes nothing for him to get back to his feet. The moment he's standing, I release the energy I've been holding directly onto the magnet.

It doesn't budge, but it was an experiment I needed. 

He launches the gauntlet again. Shadows of dream witches wrap around my arms and I can feel the sonic beat as they collide with the weapon. The claws grip my forearms and drag me forward, no matter how desperately my feet dig into the dirt to stay steady. He pulls, then yanks, and I'm sent across the room, the shadows dispelling from my arms. I look up just in time to see Sendak bringing his fist down on top of me and I roll away, but an edge of the gauntlet scrapes my side as I scramble to get away from the attack.

I recover my knife and let the Marmoran magic glow. The purple crawls up my wretched arm, veins illuminating underneath mesh. I come at him fast, and as he blocks my hit my knife scrapes across the entirety of his prosthetic. The dueling forces hum as they connect and my blade leaves a satisfying tear across the Galra tech. As soon as my knife disconnects, I backhand immediately, and the energy of my magic impacts the gauntlet hard enough to leave it swinging behind Sendak, and he takes a couple steps back with the weight. While he tries to gather himself, I throw the knife at his glowing eye. 

He ducks back and my knife misses. The glaring energy lacing through my skin buzzes and pulls the knife right back to me. Sendak comes at me with his gauntlet just as the knife returns to my hand but I don't have time for another hit. The first time he strikes I'm able to dodge, but the second time he goes for my legs. 

I yelp as I'm sent backwards and I feel my head knock against the ground. Pulling my feet underneath me, I crouch and leap, but Sendak catches me midair and the blunt force makes me drop my knife. His claws wrap around my entire torso and neck, but my arms are still free. I shove my hands forward, palms facing him, and let the equivalent impact of a speeding car hammer down on his face. 

Black shadows creep from my fingertips like ink, and the brand new vehemence engulfs my senses. As he drops me, grasping at his face and shouting in pain, I watch the tendrils stain my fingers. When I look up, the impact of my illusion has left shadows dancing across Sendak's face, leeching into his skin and momentarily erasing his features. My nails have melted into black nothingness, my fingers following as the dye-like substance crawls slowly towards my elbows. My hands feel like ice. 

"You are not getting out of here alive," Sendak growls. He's hunched over, looking up at me with his real hand holding the side of his face. Pieces of him fade in and out where my force hit him; his red eye wavers between realities, there one moment and a black hole the next. "When I'm done with you, Lotor will not see another day. You are scum to the magic race."

"Yeah, yeah." Nightmares consume my hands, billowing like smoke. I let the shadows grow, let them get angry, let the demons crackle in the palms of my hands. The darkness reaches my biceps and the mesh wiring of my arm is a deep, luminescent purple, as if the mechanics underneath are glowing and pulsing. "Keep talking."

Sendak roars. 

I shove my hands forward and the demons come screaming out, tangling around his limbs and sinking into his real eye. They tear his mouth open, forcing themselves past his fangs, but he has enough freedom to launch his gauntlet, pin me against a pillar, and  _squeeze._

The gauntlet locks my arms down and as the nightmares cease he coughs the last of the demons out. The persisting metal aggravates the scrape on my side, stinging like poisoned thorns. I whimper as the claws tighten rapidly and Sendak approaches, wiping his mouth with his wrist. 

"I know what you are." His voice is rocky, tendrils still seeping out past his lips. "I know  _who_ you are."

I cry out when the claws squeeze once more. My ribs feel like they're collapsing into my heart. The icy chill finds my shoulders. Risking a glance around the arena, I'm shocked to find the remaining people are watching the scene like a movie, and they're only mildly worried. There are crumbled ruins around them and the entire building shakes with each pulse, hit, and crash of magic, but they're almost unfazed. 

Looking back at his red eye, I make the connection. I don't know what they're seeing, but it's not this, and it leaves me alone in my defenses. Most of them have never witnessed my magic, some of them don't even know what I can do. It stays that way, now, as all they see are whatever this Manipulator has created for them. Sendak wants to kill me while no one will even notice. 

The last thing I see is Lotor.

He's frozen, pure horror plastered on his face, but he's not looking at me. His gaze falls just past my shoulder, down to the right. The cold has reached my neck, shadows shaped as fingers, hands, arms in front of me grasping at Sendak's gauntlet. 

Shiro.

The shadows consume me, my vision turning bright while my body wisps into nightmares. 

 

 

 

The thing that is Keith falls straight out of a nightmare, billows of smoke through Sendak's fingers, reduced to black dust until he reappears on the ground, kneeling on one knee and staring at his hands. There is nothing but a silhouette and two glowing white orbs for eyes, but I can see the confusion in him regardless of his features' disappearance. The only thing left of him is the mesh of his arm, glowing purple from deep within the shadows. He turns his hands over while the tips of his fingers become claws, seeming to slow time as he moves until suddenly he's screaming viciously, his voice like a million glass shards, shrill and piercing like a banshee, launching towards Sendak too quickly to be human, tendrils of nightmares sweeping off him. 

Lotor wants him to kill the beast. He wanted this nightmare state, not knowing the possibility was on the table but welcoming it nonetheless. But he continues to watch me, torn, broken, lost.

Something drew me here.

The silhouette of Keith whisks in and out of realities, appearing and disappearing through corners and shadows, sucking the life from Sendak in one moment and attacking from behind in the next. Sendak's gauntlet whizzes by me, missing its target, but it only takes that moment for him to realise his hold on Lotor and me hasn't stuck true. 

He comes at me, weapon poised, and my prosthetic hums to life. 

The shadow of Keith reaches him first. Its arms wrap around Sendak's massive neck, its claws digging into skin and bone, pulling and pulling. Sendak tips backwards, feet only barely catching him. The shadows are forces to be reckoned with, and as I leap forward to join the fight, they chill my skin that gets too close to them. 

We know each and every crevice of each other, we pushed our combat abilities to the point of exhaustion only days before, but fighting side by side with this form of Keith is terrifying. It takes so much in me to not see it, him, as a threat. The foundations and bearings of the building have begun to tear and collapse, cables and iron rods crumbling from walls, sucked towards Keith's movements like a black hole each time he travels from one point to another. 

I know he's in there. I can only believe he's trapped inside those nightmarish eyes that seem to see into every weakness, every fear, imaginable or not. The body that's consumed him brings every one of those fears to life, drawing them from Sendak one by one and pummeling him with them. 

I'm barely more than a fly in Sendak's surroundings but my Galra arm wields immense power and I let it awaken and unleash, the glowing purple a spotlight amidst the shadow of Keith. 

Sendak's gauntlet hammers me out of my focus and into the ground, pinning me. There is rubble everywhere, snapped wires sparking and iron grids ripping up from concrete. 

Keith is moving from the opposite end of the arena in an instant as I'm pinned, but in one horrifying second Sendak hauls an iron rod from the fragmented wall and casts it, the end angled in the air, the point driven into the ground, Keith skewered in the middle. 

I roar.

"You let something so insignificant drive your ambition," Sendak breathes out to the nightmare, a large toll taken from him, yet he still remains on his feet. 

The shadow seems to glitch and each time it spasms, black wisps blow off as if from a gentle breeze. The rod through Keith sticks out through a very human chest, a human chest with human features and human blood, but the wound is encompassed in angry darkness that keeps trying to stitch itself together. The shadow looks at its claws, its hands, flips them over like it did when it first appeared, watching them glitch and twist. The orbs never change, never squint or blink. They just watch, unnervingly. 

"I know who you are, Keith." Sendak keeps me pinned as he approaches the shadow, the magnet between his shoulder and gauntlet pulsing. "You have done a marvelous job of remaining a secret, until recently."

"Get away from him!" I shout, straining. 

"All it took was that little 'plus one' once I caught wind Lotor had hired a Nightmare." He extends a finger to rest under the shadow's chin, pulling lightly upwards until the eyes move from the hands to Sendak's face. "You are far from alone, Keith. In fact, it seems you hold a lot on the line." The finger withdraws and Sendak rapidly punches the shadow's face. The tendrils dissipate from the impact as its head whips back, leaving just a window of the right side of Keith's face, his violet eye visible through the edges and the corner of his mouth dribbling with blood. The liquid is black. 

Lotor is learning all of this for the first time. He's watching forlornly as his greatest weapon is sacrificed like a martyr, watching me, a friend who abandoned him for  _years_ _,_ crushed under his mother's greatest creation.

"Don't worry," Sendak smiles. "I'll make his death quick. Only Lotor will suffer."

Lotor watches on, conflicted by his morals, helpless as he watches his legacy die. My first reaction is he's dreading the image of me joining Keith's impending doom, but I realise...

He's afraid to lose Keith as well.

He promised himself there would be no death, a promise to fill the void I left behind. 

"Kill him, Keith!"

The shadow bursts at my voice, launches its claws into Sendak's eyes as it decays from the iron rod, freshly discovered power emanating fiercely. The shadows consume, eating away at Sendak's sight, blinding him entirely and so, so quickly that the beast never has the chance to counter.

Keith goes for the magnet, delicately wrapping his hands around the orb. The fiery aura burns the shadows away from his fingers but in a heartbeat the entire thing is gone, vanished from thin air. The gauntlet drops from me like a fallen piano.

Nightmares build themselves around Keith's form as he turns one last time to face Sendak, who is left stuttering. "You don't even know what you are, boy! You don't even know what this is!" They increase like a whirlwind around him, gaining and strengthening, the sound of them rising in volume as they glitch and billow until they're deafening, pulsing with energy and darkness. The roaring snaps and hitches until for a moment there is complete silence, and then....

The voice is a thousand demons, voices of nightmares.

"This is my shadow self." 

The sound of the nightmares lashing off of Keith and devouring Sendak through his eyes and mouth, spilling from the pores of his skin and ripping his flesh to shreds, wipes out the space of the building with a sonic boom. 

The gore gets the better of me and my arms have shielded my head from the blast. When I'm able to look up, Lotor has sheltered himself as well, and his eyes meet mine for a moment. I break away first, my gaze finding Sendak's body.

His corpse is crumpled on the ground, any hint of life erased from him. His sockets and crevices are nothing more than dark holes, his skin laying over bone like fabric, nothing underneath to support it. The gauntlet is lifeless in front of me, the light of the Galra tech dimmed to nothing. 

The shadows had pulled off of Keith like a blanket, as if the tendrils had been sucked into a vacuum. Now, he wavers, and I didn't realise the sound had left him in his shadow state until I hear him, gasping, breathing heavily but not finding any air. I leap forward, knowing he's about to fall, and I reach him just as his knees buckle, my arms catching him under his shoulders. He's completely out of breath as I pull him into a bridal carry, hoisting his head and shoulders up to rest against my collarbone in an attempt to help his lungs open. His eyes are wide and one of his hands is grasping shakily at empty space. 

I rush him outside into the brisk night air, doing something, anything to help him. I rest him on the ground, holding up his torso. I can't tell if he's struggling to catch his breath after the fight and effort he just put up or if he actually can't breathe. 

Black blood is bubbling from his mouth but when he coughs red comes up in its place. It spills down his chin and throat, dripping onto his shirt. Each time I look at his eyes, my mind flickers back to the empty, white orbs that took their place.

"Shiro...." I hear Lotor behind me and I spin to see him reaching towards me as if I'm nothing more than an illusion. "You...."

"I'm sorry, Lotor," I glance at him, apology written across my expression. "I don't have time."

"I don't have a doctor," Lotor stifles. "He's going to die."

"No, he's not." I pull out my phone with one hand, the other arm cradling the back of Keith's neck, and flip through the emergency contacts. As I click dial and hold the device to my ear, Keith starts to let his eyes slip. He's giving up. 

"Hey, Keith, I need you to stay awake," I demand, hiding the fear in my voice with effort. "Stay awake, it's not safe here."

He smirks. Barely.

"I'm safe," he whispers breathlessly. "You've got me."

"I love you, but please, you can't go to sleep right now. I know you want to, I love you, I love you, but you really, really can't." My tone is begging. My heart is caving. 

_"Hello?"_

"It's Shiro. I have an emergency." My voice is wet and cracking.

_"Is it you? Are you okay?"_

"I'm fine. I really need you  _right now._ Please, you have to help me."

Keith is watching me through half lidded eyes. His grasping hand finds my shirt, and it holds on. His heaving has eased but it's still heavy.

_"Where are you?"_

It takes everything in me to pull my eyes away from Keith's and the panic in me grows as it takes too long to find a street sign. "I'm sorry, I don't know." My eyes fall back down to Keith's. "I don't know."

Something pulled me here, back to this place.

_"It's okay, Shiro. We'll track your phone. We're coming, just hang on."_

I set my phone on the ground without ending the call. My hand goes to Keith's uninjured cheek. The right side of his face is bruised, his eye socket and cheekbone looking smashed and broken. His eye is already starting to swell but his violet eyes, his gorgeous violet eyes, still shine bright. 

"We're going to breathe together, okay?" 

His eyes brighten just a bit more in understanding. 

"We're going to breathe, and we're going to count to ten." Inhale, exhale. "One."

For every breath I take in and out, he takes six.

"Two."

My finger smooths the lines under his good eye. 

"Three."

He takes five.

"Four."

Five again. 

"Five."

I count six breaths from him and my brows furrow. His eyes remain locked onto mine and I can't pull myself away.

At six, he takes seven breaths. 

At seven, he's taking nine, and my panic spikes. 

We don't reach eight. He can't breathe.

He can't breathe.

I don't think of anything else as I push my lips against his and blow into his mouth. He's still propped up in my arms, his body having grown heavy against mine, his shoulder tucked under my arm that's wrapped around him. My hand that was on his cheek holds him to me as I breathe in, out, in, out through his mouth, breathing and breathing and breathing and I don't know if it's working, I have no idea if it's working, but I have to breathe for him, I have to keep him alive,

in,

and out,

over

and over

and over again,

until Allura pulls me away from him,

until I try to hang on to him,

until his hand releases my shirt when Pidge and Allura pull me away and I'm

crying

I'm crying,

Coran has him and he's alive, he's still alive,

he's alive when Coran puts him in the car,

he's alive as I cry,

as I desperately seek Lotor's eyes,

but Lotor's not there. 

 

 

 

 

 

"The Champion," she says.

Her claws sift through the sphere of webs, entangled together like galaxies.

"He has returned."

Quintessence illuminates paths across her palms. She has found him.


	13. Chapter 13

Shiro and I are in a park, swaying side by side on the swings. The ground is far away below us but it's right there, I can see it clear as day, but my feet just can't reach it. We're giggling lightly, speaking solemnly as old friends do. There is darkness around us, but the park is peaceful and free.

We're saying words but the sound is muted, as if I'm listening through a muffled door. Some moments I see Shiro's face, others I just glimpse his figure beside me. I'm watching us from a separated perspective and we look calm, happy, safe. 

There's a glimmer of flashlights from behind us, and as the strangers come closer we get up and run. It's fun. The cops chase us but we're laughing as we run and we just go, faster and faster, and the darkness opens into a forest. Shiro is beside me and running is easy, effortless, and we reach the treeline-

A witch is suddenly all I can see, very there, very terrifying as she takes up the entirety of my vision, her claws outstretched and decaying skin pulling around her empty eye sockets. It's only an instant as she shrieks, swallowing my mind whole, and I wake up in full panic. 

I'm clutching at my chest, gasping for air, my mind failing to wrap around the destruction of my dream. She killed him. 

I look up and around me, nerves wired and eyes wide. This room isn't familiar and the overwhelming realisation that I don't know where I am crushes me. There's a man with red hair in a chair near my bed and I don't know him but he's looking at me, he's approaching me, and I scramble for the knife under my pillow but  _it's not there my knife isn't there-_

There's no gun on the desk next to me but my hands keep searching for it, shoving off the papers and the clock, but they find purchase on the lamp and rip it out of the wall, and I'm up and I'm ready to throw the lamp at him and he's shouting something and I don't know who he is I don't know where I am-

but Shiro comes rushing into the room, and Lance is right behind him, and Lance looks shocked, he looks scared, but Shiro swoops to me, wrapping his arms under my shoulders and around my body as I drop the lamp, one hand holding the back of my head as he pulls me close to him on the bed, tucking my head into his neck, my chin resting on his shoulder. 

"It's okay," he says, again and again. 

I close my eyes and I breathe. 

 

 

The next time I wake up, it isn't with a jolt or fear. It's with Shiro.

He's in the bed with me, his body curled around mine like a crescent moon. His arm is draped over my side and his chest is warm against me and he's breathing slowly, deeply, and I find myself pushing my body closer to his and his arm tightens just barely in his sleep. 

I tilt my head on my pillow and my eyes move slowly around the room. The colours are pastel and gentle and the bed is small. The curtains flow like silk next to the window, the light beaming in softly, sparkles of dust glittering in the shine. Lance is in the chair the strange man was in before, but his head is propped in his hand and he's asleep as well, snoring so softly that I can barely hear him. There are bags under his eyes and his clothes are dirty and wrinkled. His sleeve has an odd mark on it, and when I squint my eyes I see it's a smear of blood. 

There's a bandage around my entire torso and when I squeeze my eyes shut I feel the wrap around my head and the gauze on the right side of my face. I'm stiff and so, so sore, so I just lay here, enveloped by Shiro. 

"Lance." My whisper comes out as a harsh, quiet rasp. I barely recognise my own voice, but somehow Lance peers up at me from his half-lidded eyes hiding behind his bangs and he is so exhausted but he tries, God, he tries to welcome me. 

"Hey, buddy," he murmurs as he delicately approaches me, as if I'll explode if he takes a single wrong step. He kneels next to the bed, reaching over and caressing my arm. He glances at Shiro and then back at me, and I try to smile but I don't know if I actually do underneath my exhaustion. We're all tired. 

His expression is so pleasant, so compassionate, and I just look at him. His eyes are navy and his face is angular and refined. He rests his chin on the bed, his hand sliding up and down my arm softly. I can't even bring myself to reach out to him, just to squeeze his hand and tell him I'm okay, because I am, I think I finally, really am, but I just lay here and let him comfort me, Shiro's weight around me like a blanket. 

I must have dozed off for only ten minutes, but Lance and Shiro haven't moved and they're deeply unconscious. Pidge is in the doorway, holding their phone up, and I know they're taking a picture if they haven't already taken twenty. I frown at them but I'm only joking. 

"Where is Hunk?" My voice is hardly stronger than before but the rasp still makes the sound nearly unintelligible. 

"In the kitchen," Pidge responds. They're quiet but not whispering. "I just woke up. It's been a long night."

I know better than to apologise. "Thank you," I say instead. The words rumble deep within my chest.

Shiro stirs at our voices, waking up gradually. When he disconnects from me I feel the rush of cool air, but I immediately miss his closeness. He reaches across me and tenderly shakes Lance's shoulder, whose head pops up fast enough to throw him off balance. Shiro sits up and presses his hands into his eyes. His hair is messy but he's much cleaner than Lance. When I look at Pidge again, I notice they also have blood on their clothes, much more than Lance. 

It takes me a long minute to reach the kitchen. Shiro hovers around me but he knows my defiance, knows how adamant I am about doing things myself, so he only does just that: he hovers. 

It's nice to be out of the bedroom. The kitchen is even brighter, a large window opening up the main wall. It's a beautiful morning.

Everyone is quiet, not out of discomfort but just tired, solemn. There's something left unsaid, but no one looks like they want to dwell on it. Not yet.

Shiro moves like he's as sore as I am. His joints refuse to bend easily and he winces after every handful of steps. Sometimes he tries to stretch but the effort just makes him grimace. My eyebrows pull upwards in sympathy and I open my arms to him from the chair I'm seated in. 

He limps over and hugs me. I shove my face into his stomach and breathe, taking in his smell and the pillow of his abdomen. 

"Why are you so clean?" I grumble into his shirt. 

"We had to force him to shower," Pidge explains as they join me at the table, handing me a large cup of water. 

I want to smile as I gulp down the water, but I know what it means. He wouldn't have willingly left me. He'd have to be pushed to exhaustion before he'd admit he needed care, needed to eat, to drink, to take a shower, to put on a clean pair of clothes. 

"Looks like I might need to force the rest of you to do the same," I manage.

"I smell pan-" The red-haired man halts in the middle of his sentence as he waltzes into the room, locking eye contact with me. My cup is still held up to my lips and I don't move in the slightest as we stare each other down. He looks like he's ready to turn tail, waiting for me to leap at him. 

He looks like he walked straight out of a comic book. He's tall, lanky, long-legged. His mustache is whimsical and all of his expressions are big, showy, fanciful, but now he's frozen in place, unable to look away from me. 

I look away and finish my water. "Sorry for trying to kill you."

The man nearly melts into a puddle. "Well, that's alright!" he stammers. He's loud. "No offense taken!" He wiggles over to Hunk to check on the pancakes. I watch him.

"Who is that?" I ask carefully.

"Coran," Shiro answers. "He's a very old friend of mine, and Allura's uncle."

"Is this Allura's house?"

"Coran's."

"Mittens," I whip my head back to Shiro. 

"She's been fed," he replies, squeezing my shoulder. 

I let my thoughts settle for a minute, staring at the table.

"Where is Allura?"

Pidge looks down uncomfortably. Shiro just looks at Coran and Hunk.

"She's, um...." Lance tries. "Not here."

I hum. "Can I have some more water?"

Pidge jumps up to give themself something to do and refills the glass. I swallow only half of it this time. 

"I know there's a lot you guys want to ask me."

Hunk serves the pancakes but I have a hard time touching mine. I'm not hungry, just thirsty and tired. Everyone else is famished.

"Do you mind?" Coran queries. 

"I don't mind." It might even be easier talking this stranger than admitting I've been hiding secrets from my friends.

"Shiro explained a majority of it to us late last night," he starts. "We knew... that he used to be involved with, well,  _things_. We didn't really know what, but we all were there for him when he was in trouble and when he decided he wanted to leave it all behind him."

I look at the group but they're all eating intently.

"I need to say," Coran buffs himself, "you  _are_ welcome here. I promise."

It's a weird statement to make. I tuck that away next to the information that Allura is conveniently missing.

He continues. "Your wound is healing itself. It was hard for us to do much other than stitch you up initially and then wrap it once most of the pieces had been mended. Your magic is sewing you itself, but it's taking some time. Your black eye already looks better, but some of the bones in your face were definitely broken. Some still are."

”Your lungs collapsed,” Shiro adds heavy-heartedly.

"I don't get why this hasn't happened before." I fiddle with my hands.

"You...." Shiro starts, but he doesn't find words.

"I was something else," I finish for him. "I know."

"It could be that the shadow state itself was wounded and is just repairing," Pidge includes. "So if this happened to you on your own, you would be...."

"Yeah."

Later, Shiro and I drive back to the wreckage. 

From the street, it looks like nothing ever happened. The building still stands, untouched. We get out of the car, the sound of the doors closing too loud in the empty space. As I start to walk towards the door, I step in something slippery, but there's nothing but the cement sidewalk under my feet when I look down. 

As my hand turns the knob and pulls the door open, the mirage vanishes. 

The ground floor is in ruins, barely supporting the rest of the building. There's smoke and ash but the fires have burnt themselves out. Crumbled walls and crushed stone litter the area, shards of glass glittering from the evening light on the ground from shattered windows.

Behind me is a pool of blood on the sidewalk, my dark red footprints leading up to me. 

Shiro is staring at the puddle. His trench coat sways lightly in the breeze, his hands shoved into his pockets. 

"I'm okay, Shiro," I say from my place at the door.

"I know," he says, but he doesn't look up. 

I leave Shiro outside and scope out the debris. I make my way down the stairs into the basement, lights flickering around me, wires sparking. It doesn't take long to find Sendak's corpse. The stench and gore makes my nose wrinkle.

There's no other bodies, at least not that I can find. The foundations of the building have been pulled apart and yet it still stands, groaning. The spot Lotor's throne sat overlooking the arena is a pile of rock. The place looks like its been abandoned for years.

Back outside, the fresh air is relieving. Shiro is looking at something on his phone but when he sees me from the corner of his vision he looks up quickly, as if expecting something. I'm alone with nothing to show, nothing to give him. 

"Lotor isn't here. There's no bodies besides Sendak's."

He watches his feet in response. "He'll find us," he finally says. "He always does." He pulls out a joint, and, in my surprise, I ask where he got it. Lance gave it to him, said Shiro would probably need it.

When I reach the car, I turn around to lean against it, flipping my jacket collar up to block the chill, and find the mirage has been restored. It's daunting to see structure in the presence of destruction. 

An era of me pulling existing nightmares from others to wreak torment has ended. I've learned to create my own. I've become one.

"Could you...." Shiro's hands shake as he brings the joint to his lips. "Could you stay with me tonight?"

The collar of my jacket brushes against my jaw as I turn my face to him. When he looks up, there's a direct reflection of how he sees me in that moment etched into his eyes. He sees my bruises, my black eye, the way the right side of my face doesn't really want to work correctly, the dark circles around my eyes that are more than just exhaustion. 

He has a scrape under his eye that's long since stopped bleeding and there are bruises on his knuckles. His prosthetic is clean and perfect, untarnished by any memory of combat. 

"Of course, Shiro."

For the first time, we pass the couch, feet shuffling heavily across the floor as we're carried to his room. He sits me on the bed, positioning himself behind me as he gingerly unwraps the bandages around my chest. I don't miss the dried blood as he discards them. He kisses my back once, his lips like butterflies.

I grab one of his shirts and a pair of his joggers I've fallen in love with adorning, folding them neatly on the toilet seat as I hop in the shower, pointedly avoiding the mirror. I can hear him just outside the door, just within earshot, just out of reach. 

My wound scares me more than Sendak's carcass.

Black dyes the skin around the hole like a victim of necromancy, tendrils crawling between pores, faint, but just thick enough to be visible. The tear from the iron rod stings as water cascades down it and I nearly hiss at the contact. The battling infection in the center of my torso is a mess of diluted gore, sealing itself minutely for the last twenty-four hours. I reach behind me, my arms screaming at the stretch, and when my fingers find the corresponding gash next to my spine I flinch.

The hot water only aggravates me more as it heats up, but after I adjust the dial my wound nearly sings at the sensation. The cold water melts away the sting, the redness underneath the shadows easing. There's roaring in my ears that isn't from the pelting of the shower, a hundred nightmares festering in my head. They've been there for years, but now they've been given a few minutes out in the open and they want it back. 

I let my legs bend and they sit me down in the tub, the water falling on me like a rain cloud just above my head. I pull my knees to my chest, wincing as the gash pulls with the effort. I rest my head against the tile wall, closing my eyes and counting to ten silently. When I open them, I reach my hand up just above my knees and watch my fingers turn into claws.

I don't let the nightmares past my wrist and they don't push. It's simple, almost, and fascinating in the control I have. The shadows move as one with me, taking over my hand, erasing my features and creating something volatile. I turn my hand over and illuminate a small flame in my hand, and all I can think is I'm a figment of my own imagination as I sit here with my knees pulled close to me at the bottom of Shiro's shower, kindling death in my hand.

Shiro has his face buried in a pillow, sprawled out on his stomach in just his sweatpants in the middle of his massive bed. Placing my knife on the nightstand, I climb up and sit on the backs of his thighs. He squeaks when I poke his butt before I lean forward and trace my hands around his back. He's tense at first, but as I apply more pressure to my hands and draw in bigger circles his muscles gradually relax and he softens underneath me. I massage his shoulders, his lower back, his side where he has a blossoming bruise I'm careful to bypass. He took a beating protecting me. 

Before he can fall asleep under my affection I lay next to him, pulling the blankets over us both, letting my fingers hover just over the hair of his skin, tracing the Japanese dragon. My eyes follow each trail, each speck of detail of the artwork, my fingers fluttering around the ink as if the dragon will awaken if I press too hard.

"That feels really good," Shiro murmurs from his pillow.

My fingers make it down to his elbow and eventually pull his hand closer to me, tucking it under my chin while I stroke his wrist, as light as his kiss to my spine. 

I continue even after his breath evens out and he's pulled into sleep, hugging his hand close to me. It's easier to lay on my side like this, the weight lifted from my wound and my eyes able to watch Shiro's back rise and fall in front of me, slow and steady. 

I wake up to hands around my throat. 

I'm on my back and the pillows are muffling my ears. One of the hands is cold and when my eyes finally flash open the room is bathed in vibrant purple and it's Shiro, Shiro is straddling me with luminous, yellow eyes, his prosthetic is glowing like it did as he fought, and he has both of his hands around my throat.

He's pressing harshly on my windpipe and his fingers are tightening tightening tightening and his arm is buzzing, screaming, and I can't do anything but open my mouth and choke, my hands resting on his wrists, too weak to push. My chest burns each time he jars me, my skin twisting as my body tries to buck but my limbs feel like lead and I'm drowning  _I'm drowning_ _-_

There's a fraction of time that I feel his human hand give, it loosens only slightly as if he's fighting back and it releases me for just a blink of an eye, and that moment is all I need. 

I knee him in the groin and his body shivers as it buckles and my elbow is digging into his throat and my knife is poised in my hand ready to sink into his neck but he pulls away from me violently-

and he's still.

The glow subsides from his eyes and he's shivering, trembling, gaze flicking between his hands and me until he locks onto me, tears spilling out over his irises. 

"I don't... I don't know...." he stutters, voice hardly a whisper, tears racing down his cheeks. 

I'm breathing hard, feeling my throat mend itself in its release, my knife still ready and my elbow still blocking him from me, and I watch him, waiting for something, anything, but when I replace my knife on the nightstand he flinches away from me so hard that I fear he'll fall off the bed. 

"I don't know," he's saying past the tightness in his throat, and soon he's crying, his cries turning to sobs, and I slowly,  _slowly_ move towards him, wrap my arms around him, and hug him.

His arms are limp and his head falls on my shoulder, and he cries. 

I've failed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic is finally coming to its end, slowly and painfully. There's only two or three chapters left and I'll try to get those out as soon as possible for you guys.


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